Haas F1 Team Boss Accuses Renault Of Sour Grapes Syndrome

With Renault and Haas engaged in a spirited fight for fourth in the 2018 F1 Constructors Championship, Haas F1 team boss Gunther Steiner feels as though the French outfit is more focused on what everyone else is doing than on what they should be doing to get better.

The issue is of course the fact that Renault protested against Haas after the Italian Grand Prix, due to an alleged illegal floor design, which in turn meant valuable points lost.

During an interview with Autosport, when asked about Renault’s form and whether or not his team smells blood, Steiner had this to say:

“I just see their performance has gone down, I don’t know what’s going on internally. For sure they dropped their performance, and their engine they make themselves so they can have nobody to blame.”

“You could see that they were a bit desperate when they put the protest in against us in Monza. They’ll try anything instead of focusing on themselves to get better.”

With four races still to go, Haas will have plenty of chances to reclaim fourth place in the standings, since they now trail Renault by just 8 points and tracks such as the U.S., Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi will greatly favor the American team’s Ferrari power unit.

As for what Renault managing director Cyril Abiteboul thinks about his team’s poor run as of late, it seems that he’s indirectly placing “blame” on the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari.

“We see that we are in a very tight midfield with most of the cars around us benefiting and tracking the development of the top teams Mercedes and Ferrari – who really are in an arms race for the championship,” said Abiteboul.

“In my opinion, we are almost collateral damage. We are seeing the collateral consequence and collateral effect of Ferrari having had at some point an upper hand on Mercedes, and then a very strong rate of development by Mercedes to catch up again. Under the current regulations, this is having a positive impact on all of the other [customer] teams, so Force India, Haas and Sauber have gained from that fight between the two.”