Guenther Steiner ended the three-day test fully satisfied with the results. A pleasant surprise for the American Team, which benefits from the entry of a new sponsor, MoneyGram, who is making a financial difference in the progress of the Haas F1 Team.
Steiner approaches the first race of the season with enthusiasm, given the test results. It seems to be the best test performance Haas has ever had.
“Preparation wise yes (the best ever) and running wise. You have to look out there. I think it’s the best one in Formula 1 ever. We’ve seen, how many red flags? Three? Everybody doing the laps… if you go to the lap count of previous season, first test, this never happened before in my opinion. I’m so amazed about it. Five years ago every two, three hours there was a red flag. Now we’re all doing the laps, just boom, boom, boom.”
“I think that going back to the best test we ever had – we had the best test because last year was our worst test because we were down so much. This year we went through our full program, almost everything. We lost a few runs because of the throttle issue we had, but not a lot.”
“The guys got a lot of information. This car is an evolution of last year so it’s not a completely new car, you can learn a lot quicker because you know what you will encounter and mechanics take less time to do things, do set-up changes, because last year everything was new.”
Steiner is not the only one who came out of the tests with a good feeling. The entire team seems to be ready to take the next step from last year’s disappointing season, in particular Kevin Magnussen commented:
“Haas definitely has taken a step. It’s a new era for the team that we’re stepping into, I would say.”
“It’s exciting, we’re heading in the right direction. And it’s going to be exciting to see where we go. Everyone in the team can see that we’re in a good place and that we’re moving forward and getting closer to achieving the goals that we have for the team. And progress motivates everyone.
“I’m pretty happy, it’s as always very difficult to see how much progress you’ve made. One thing is your feeling. My feeling is good with the car. But we don’t know. You know, if the lap times that we’re seeing from the fastest guys, if that’s as fast as they can go.
“We know we can go faster but maybe they did those lap times and they can go faster as well. We’re always trying to not look at the times, so much and just focus on your programme and getting those items done that you’ve planned to really just build your knowledge about the car.
“Testing is sometimes as a driver frustrating, because you’re putting things on the car that you know is not going to be the right direction for the balance of the day. But you need to try it anyway, just to learn and see how the car reacts.”
Although there is always a certain impatience on the part of the drivers who, after the winter break, aim to push the car to its maximum limit, Haas seems to be on the right track to impress. Steiner can enjoy this start of the 2023 Championship with one less burden, after overcoming rocky terrain this time last year with Nikita Mazepin as Russia invaded the Ukraine.
“I almost cry about it! No, we had a little chat a few days ago, and said think about what we had to do last year at this time. It was like, how the hell do we get out of this hole? Because we keep on falling into holes. You think back now… I think how we handled it I still wouldn’t do anything different.”
Photo: Haas F1 Team
