The British Grand Prix was less than smooth for the Haas drivers, as issues plagued the team and allowed only one of the two cars to complete the race. The sole remaining car ended up at the rear of the field.
The issues started with Esteban Gutiérrez during his first pit stop onto the intermediate tyres. It was a lengthy stop for the team. When the safety car returned to the pit lane after starting the race, Haas was one of the many teams that made the mad dash into the pit lane to get the intermediate tyre compound, having been forced to start the race on the wet weather tyres behind the safety car. This meant that both Haas teammates would have to pit together.
With only a 20 second gap between the teammates, this meant that there was a possibility that the cars would need to be stacked in the pit box if the crew didn’t manage to get the first car serviced and released before the second car arrived. Romain Grosjean was the first to pit, with Gutiérrez close behind. Unfortunately for Gutiérrez, Grosjean’s pit stop was a little slow and they needed to wait for a gap in the chaotic pit lane traffic. This meant that Gutiérrez was forced to wait before getting serviced. This cost him a little time, although that wasn’t the end of the team’s issues.
The team’s tyre strategy was messed up by a power failure on the team’s trackside computer systems. This meant that the GPS systems were turned off and the team had some issues viewing the telemetry data from the cars. This led to some confusion among the team members as to when the cars needed to be called into the pits.
Although that was bad, Grosjean suffered the worst luck for the team, as he was forced to pull over on the circuit and retire from the race. The issue was reportedly a transmission failure on his car on lap 17. Gutiérrez didn’t have the best result either. Although he managed to complete the race, he was the last of the running cars in the race. This left him in P16 and meant that the team scored no points this weekend.
This was disappointing for the team, given their decent starting spot on the grid. These poor results come just one week after the team’s best collective result in the Austrian Grand Prix. Haas will be hoping for a better showing in the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Weekend Summary: 2016 British Grand Prix
Rosberg Demoted To Third In British Grand Prix
