Team Boss Gunther Steiner believes that the US team could “mess something up” during their Formula 1 debut in Melbourne on Sunday.
These types of concerns are well founded, since Haas struggled with reliability issues during their second pre-season test.
On top of that, drivers Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez completed only 32 laps between them during the first practice session, due to bad weather conditions.
Steiner told the media chances of something going wrong for them this weekend are higher than he’d like.
“We can handle it, but it’s not like we are going in prepared saying we have hit every milestone here,” stated the team principal.
“There is always [the chance] we could mess something up, and I wouldn’t blame anyone if we did. We’ve just not had the time or the possibility to train for it. It takes a bit of time, and days like today don’t help. We are not as prepared as we could be. We need to make progress”
With rain still on the horizon for Saturday, Haas F1 needs to play it safe during FP3 in order not to compromise their chances during Qualifying and ultimately the race itself.
“The team doesn’t want to take risks because if you start to do that what you learn is a very small amount, so there is no point,” added Steiner. “The opportunity [to learn] is not big enough, so we will just try to make sure the car is ready for qualifying and be done with it.”
Sounds to us like he’s eager to get their first race in Formula 1 out of the way as fast and possible, gather some valuable data and regroup in time for the second Grand Prix of the year in Bahrain, on April 3rd.
Story references: autosport
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