The new Haas F1 Team started the season with some very impressive results, but the recent performance doesn’t reflect that. The team’s eyes are once again on double points, but neither driver seems particularly pleased with their results so far this weekend.
Romain Grosjean has been the only driver on the team to score any points this season, with 18 in total. All of these points were scored in the first two races and he was not very happy with the Chinese Grand Prix, calling it “a horrific race” after his P19 finish. At the end of that weekend without points, the team had only achieved half of their goals that they had set for the weekend.
Grosjean doesn’t seem any happier with the car in Russia, complaining about low grip levels and missing that special feeling from the car:
“It’s been a complicated weekend so far for us. We’ve been struggling with the grip and the car. It’s difficult to get the tire to work on such a smooth asphalt. We’re progressing, we’re learning and doing the most we can do. I still don’t have the feeling I used to have earlier in the season with the car. We really need to analyze that. Then tomorrow’s going to be a long race with a lot of fuel saving. The tires are hard to keep in the window, so it’s going to be challenging for everyone. Maybe we can try to be a bit more clever. Let’s do our best, let’s analyse and let’s keep having some interesting data. We’ll see where we are after the race.”
Both drivers finished at the bottom of the second qualifying session, putting Grosjean ahead of his teammate. Both drivers set similar lap times, but they were still over 0.2 seconds off of Fernando Alonso’s pace in Q2. The Haas duo has been consistently hovering around the P15 to P17 range for all of the sessions this weekend.
Esteban Gutiérrez was also unhappy with his P16 qualifying result. He too complained of the lack of grip at the circuit. “Qualifying was pretty hard,” he explained after qualifying. “It was difficult to get the tires to work here so it’s been a bit of a challenge. I was doing my best, with all the options we have available, to maximize everything but I’m not really satisfied with the result.”
Contrary to the drivers, the Haas Team Principal, Guenther Steiner, was happy with the team’s qualifying result. “We are very happy with where we qualified,” he told the press. “We had a difficult weekend leading up to today, but we recovered, and ended up 15th and 16th which is very close to the two McLarens. To be in Q2 with both cars is great for us. We are usually stronger in the race than we are in qualifying. We’ll definitely be pushing with both cars to maximize our position and get into the points, so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens tomorrow.”
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