Günther Steiner gets the “little gratifications” from Haas’ tough season

Günther Steiner says that he can take some positive aspects from Haas’ character building season, which he described as “small satisfactions”.

With Haas not upgrading its car and shifting its entire development focus to 2022, Haas always thought there would be an uphill battle for points this year.

This is exactly how it turned out: The rookie drivers Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin were consistently at the bottom of the field and achieved 12th place in the Hungarian Grand Prix for the German.

But in the middle of the darkness there is an occasional ray of hope, because Schumacher reached Q2 at the French Grand Prix – an achievement that he set his sights on last time in Russia, he admitted.

Michael Schumacher’s son shared the Alfa Romeos and was less than a quarter of a second behind Kimi Räikkönen, which was no small feat given the lap times of almost 1min 50s.

As expected, there were many incidents this year, Schumacher and Mazepin fought on the track, but team boss Steiner definitely has reason to be happy.

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An up and down afternoon in Sochi – Günther expresses his thoughts… # HaasF1 #RussianGP pic.twitter.com/948fITtj1L

– Haas F1 Team (@ HaasF1Team) September 26, 2021

“[The performance] shows that the boys are learning what is the most important thing to be ready next year, ”Steiner told reporters.

“It’s pretty nice. We were Kimi. close, or Mick was close [in Russian GP qualifying] so it’s always encouraging. At least you get a few little satisfactions from a weekend.

“There aren’t many, but every little fight, at least we can take the fight to someone. I think we’re getting better every race weekend and the goal is to be in a good position next year if we can hopefully collect points on the weekends. “

Steiner added that the learning curve for Schumacher and Mazepin as they rose from Formula 2 may have been steeper than either of them expected.

“Both learn a lot and will never admit it, but when you start in F1 you think you know everything and 10 races later you actually realize how little you knew at the beginning,” added the Italian, who did the same Duo again next season.

“With such young drivers, this process will take a while. They may have been studying for a couple of years, but now they are in a good position [where] at least they get to know all the processes, they know the team.

“We’ve always said that our goal is to have riders who stay longer than a year because it takes time to get used to, especially when you’re a rookie. I think we’ll be well positioned with the drivers next year. “

Planet F1 verdict