Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner says the American outfit’s new front wing upgrade has been a “very significant” step forward.
Problems during practice in Singapore and Malaysia meant Haas wasn’t able to fully extract the gains from the new front wing until Japan.
The team got both cars into Q3 for the first time this season, but failed to score a point in the race. However, Steiner is optimistic heading to Haas’ home race in Austin, Texas.
“I think it was very significant,” he said on the new front wing, ahead of this weekend’s United States Grand Prix.
“The delay in getting it to work is like when you are at a grand prix and you have problems in FP1 and FP2 – you focus on trying to find out what the tyre is doing and the data on the tyre and basic things.
“You cannot develop a new part on the car. We had problems in FP1 and FP2 in Singapore and Malaysia, so we didn’t do a good job of finding out about the wing.
“But in Japan, we had good practice sessions and, sure enough, the wing came alive in Japan.”
The team has scored five 11th place finishes since early July, with Steiner admitting there’s very little between the midfield teams: “The midfield is so close. Sometimes we are ahead in the midfield, like we were in Japan.
“We were almost on par on a single lap with Force India and faster than Williams and McLaren. But then sometimes we are a little bit at the tail end. It’s very close in that region.
“Whatever you do you need a little bit of luck and you need additional luck for a good performance to get in the points. We take away that it is our first season and sometimes we are doing more than is expected of us.”
