Haas makes changes to prevent 'stagnation'

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says changes were required at his team ahead of its second season in F1 to prevent "stagnation".

An impressive first season in the sport saw Haas pick up 29 points and finish eighth in the constructors' championship ahead of Renault, Sauber and Manor. 22 of those points came courtesy of Romain Grosjean in the first four races, but Haas remained competitive with Q3 appearances as late as the penultimate round in Brazil.

Steiner says the replacement of Esteban Gutierrez with Kevin Magnussen in the driver line-up is the most obvious change, but adds further tweaks have been made behind the scenes to freshen up the team.

"We have made changes and part of those are changes are with the drivers for next year," Steiner said. "We have new engineers and changed some people. You always try to do better but it is about how you can get the best of the best or the best you can get in the position we are in.

"We can not get [Lewis] Hamilton or Adrian Newey, we will do the best with what we can get and makes changes instead of stagnating and saying it is okay. If you standstill you are going backwards.

"You need to do your best effort in this sport. I feel we are pretty well prepared for next year but I don’t know how well prepared."

According to team owner Gene Haas, Grosjean saved Haas from "a world of hurt" with his results in 2017 as he scored all 29 of the team's points.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.