Photo Credits: Haas F1 Team
Team Principal of Haas F1 Team, Guenther Steiner, has said that Nico Hülkenberg’s recent comments that “McLaren showed the way” and can be “our role models” does not put pressure on his team and mechanics but instead it is the complete opposite. The man leading Haas F1 Team said prior to the summer break: “I don’t think it’s pressure, I think it’s motivation.”
It took McLaren three races to score their first points of 2023 and they did so due to P6 in Melbourne for their talismanic driver Lando Norris. However, it was not until 10 races in to the season that Norris found his way to the podium after a hard fought P2 in front of his home crowd at the British Grand Prix. The main man at McLaren then followed this up the following weekend in Hungary as he set his sight on breaking his own records this year – and not just trophies. Oscar Piastri’s P2 in the Sprint at Spa ahead of the summer break confirmed that McLaren had turned a corner and was very much a team back in contention to consistently achieve points and even podiums on race weekends.
In an interview with Motorsport-Magazin, Haas F1 Team’s Nico Hülkenberg was quoted as saying: “McLaren showed the way. At the beginning of the season they were still driving behind us in Saudi Arabia, but they turned it around with massive updates. They have to be our role models. Our engineers and aerodynamicists are of course responsible for finding and doing something.”
During the weekend of the Belgian Grand Prix, Guenther Steiner was asked if it’s realistic to have McLaren as an example.
“We spoke about it in a positive way. That is, if you take the positives out – obviously we are not doing what McLaren is doing. A lot of teams are making upgrades and are still where they are. McLaren made one and have done a very good job, you have to compliment people like this. But it shows you that, with the right, you know you need to do good work and be a little bit lucky, it can be done.
“It’s not a thing that you say ‘I give up now’ and ‘we can never get there’. It has been done. And if something has been done, you can try to do that. We spoke about that in meetings where Nico was also present – it is possible, what he meant. We shouldn’t say ‘Oh, it is not possible’, because, then, we stay where we are. It is possible, and there is proof that it is possible,” said Steiner.
Guenther Steiner was also asked as to whether these comments from Nico Hülkenberg put unnecessary pressure on the team’s mechanics as it puts them into the spotlight. Steiner could not have been clearer in his response as he explained the impact the improvement made by the Woking-based manufacturer can have on his American owned team.
“I don’t think it’s pressure, I think it’s motivation. I think you misunderstood that. It’s not like putting pressure, saying ‘You need to do this’, that is too easy,” Steiner claimed. “But I think it’s motivation for people to show them that somebody did that, which means you can do it as well.
“Seasons ago, how many times have you seen such a big step? Very few in the last 20 years, with an update making such a big leap…Knowing that there can be light at the end of the tunnel, is a good thing, this is not pressure – this is the opposite of pressure, this is saying, ‘Guys, you can do this as well’,” explained Steiner.
The first step to any improvement is accepting an error has been made. One of the main reasons that Haas’ VF-23 has only scored 11 points to date in 2023 is because the car shows greater tyre degradation in a race than many of its rivals. Steiner later revealed that “I think we realised something about the tyre in Bahrain” showing how his team had been trying to address the issue for some time.
With the tyre degradation difference apparent, the man steering the ship at Haas F1 Team was asked how difficult it is to convince engineers they’ve done something wrong?
“I think it’s very because, if it is wrong, they didn’t make it intentionally wrong, they thought it was right,” Steiner stated. “But if you see that, obviously, other people can handle the tyres differently, at some stage you need to admit it’s wrong because we get the same tyres and we’ve got the same wheels now as well. In the old days you had different rims as well.
“Now everyone’s got the same wheels and tyres, so there must be something wrong with the car. And obviously admission is the first step of getting better,”
The current F1 Constructors’ Championship has a congested group of teams from P7 to P10 with a range of 8 points covering them all. Haas F1 Team finished the 2022 F1 season in P8 and will surely be expecting to at least match this result this year. With the team currently sat In that same spot and level on points with Williams – the motivation for all in the Haas F1 Team ranks is clear.
With 10 race weekends still to come once racing resumes after the summer break in the Netherlands it is obvious that updates as ever will be the key to success. McLaren may indeed be showing others what is possible but time will tell as to which team follows suit the quickest. Should one rival get the jump on the other – then they may really start to feel the pressure.
