Gene Haas not happy with results so far this year – Steiner

2020 70th Anniversary Grand Prix

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Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says team owner Gene Haas isn’t happy with his outfit’s results so far this year.

However Steiner is hopeful they sign the new Concorde Agreement and commit to remaining in Formula 1 in the coming weeks.

Gene Haas, pictured with his drivers in February, has seen his team’s performance slip since their competitive 2016 debut. Haas has scored a single point so far this year and lies ninth in the championship, with only point-less Williams behind them.

Asked by RaceFans what Haas made of his team’s performance so far this year Steiner said: “I don’t know his state of mind right now. But the results, we were not happy.”

“But he knows that we are having a tough year and it will continue tough,” Steiner continued. “So I think he’s somewhere in between.

“This question is always difficult to answer for your bosses, for the team owner, how his state is. I think he’s alright. Obviously, he’s not happy with the results, but the rest he’s alright.

“I think we are in a good point and hopefully signing the Concorde Agreement in the next weeks.”

The team will not consider plans for its driver line-up for the 2021 F1 season until signing, Steiner added.

“Timing-wise at the moment the thing to do is to tidy up the Concorde Agreement in the near future and then speak about drivers,” he said.

“We haven’t even looked or started to talk about drivers. I didn’t speak to Gene about it. At the moment we have got a lot of other things to do first and then we can speak about drivers.”

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26 comments on “Gene Haas not happy with results so far this year – Steiner”

  1. Haas has been in Motor Racing for some time he’s always done pretty well and apparently his company profits have gone up by being associated with F1 which I believe was the primary goal.
    But that would have been the first couple of seasons of good results. A string of DNFs and running around the rear of the field not so good for business.

    1. A string of DNFs and running around the rear of the field not so good for business.

      Not good for the economics of the F1 team business, @johnrkh.
      But for his tooling business it doesn’t make a big difference I think. Commercial exposure will still be the same.

      1. Same exposure, probably. Same kind of exposure – I wouldn’t think so.

      2. I’d say that especially now when there is still a big lull due to the pandemic, the exposure F1 offers can make a huge difference in keeping the company in the (right) spotlights.

        Also, since they won’t have to invest a lot extra for next year, while at the same time the budget cap comes in and the new commercial agreement offers better terms for most teams apart from the top 3, that should be a pretty decent thing to sign up for.

  2. I laughed out loud at this headline.

    What did y’all expect, that he’d be over the moon with coming in last or second to last every race? :D

    1. That would be somewhere between a good joke and immensely sad if a team owner was satisfied with the results they have been having recently!

  3. I don’t think Haas will be on the grid in 2022. Their car is a mess, Steiner is a mess and their drivers are a mess.

    1. Maybee thinking a little less cleans up your mess:)

    2. That would be the dumbest decision, unless you mean Haas sells the team.
      Budget Cap, new car designs, and new commercial agreement are likely to increase the value of all minor F1 teams (from negative now, to potentially hundreds of millions after that).
      @paeschli

      1. @coldfly on the other hand, there are some aspects of the rule changes that arguably aren’t necessarily in Haas’s favour, and might even have the counter-intuitive impact of increasing costs.

        Under those new regulations, the expansion of the “listed parts” regulations might be something of a detriment, because now they will be forced to design or otherwise commission other external partners (e.g. Dallara) to produce components that they were able to purchase from Ferrari until now.

        Right now, Haas has operated with a comparatively small number of staff and a comparatively low budget because they’ve been able to buy in components from external parties. Might, in fact, the requirement to design more components in house or acquiring more components from third parties actually hurt their particular operating model and make it more expensive for them to participate in F1 in the future?

  4. That’s because they’ve now got a crap engine in the back.

  5. Time to pull the plug.

  6. Maybee thinking a little less cleans up your mess:)

  7. They turned down Leclerc for 2019!

    1. And you know he would have been better because?

  8. It would be a shame to see them go but I can understand why they’d consider pulling the plug. If the team was built largely on the cheap in buying everything they could from Ferrari and outsourcing what they couldn’t and is mainly a moving billboard for their tooling buisness… well it’s not really getting a lot of exposure. The encounter with Rich Energy probably hasn’t helped much either. Unfortunate, as if the Ferrari was a rocketship the Haas wouldn’t be as terrible as it is now.

    It’d be very bad for the grid to lose another team.

  9. Perhaps Haas needs a change? Perhaps Steiner has had his day, and the drivers too. If Checo becomes available, they need to get him. He brings money and certainly be an improvement on the current pairing.

    1. It is quite easy to say replace everything and all your trouble is gone. They have only been in F1 for 5 years and are still new and very small team compared to the other teams. Steiner is ex Red Bull F1 so for sure very respected in F1 and as for drivers i don’t see Kevin Magnussen as over the hill at all. He is still young but with a lot of experience. Put last years engine in the new car and you will have something very close to RP or Mclaren maybe even better.

    2. Yeah, I’d love to see him get beaten by MAG.

  10. Perhaps they should switch to being a Renault customer instead of F

    1. Oops!

      To continue… instead of Ferrari? And replace Romain with the Hulk

  11. Haas actually created a good arrow package which allowed them to maximize their tires temps this season but yet Ferrari pretty much sold them and neutered engine after the FIA got done with them so now they’re not much better off then they were last year.

  12. Simple, just do one thing… hire better drivers!!!

  13. Consider that Sauber with essentially the same car, are having problems also. I’d say it’s not the teams problem, but a Ferrari problem that has caused both Haas and Sauber to run at the back.

  14. Perhaps should be more involved than sitting on the sideline and complaining how the team is not doing well enough. Gene seems to fixed on ‘buy legal stuff from Ferrari and hope it works’ strategy and if it doesn’t work he shows his unhappy enigma face to Steiner, telling him it must get better or he quits. This team will never go forward if they go on like this.

  15. I think it’s time to retool the team let Grosjean go and Magnussen and bring in Perez and Hulkenberg.

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