Haas Team Principal Guenther Steiner says that he is “a bit scared” of reliability issues that were uncovered at pre-season testing.
Across the six days of running in Barcelona and Bahrain, Haas tallied 413 laps, the fewest of all 10 teams on the grid.
With the new season getting underway this weekend in Bahrain, Steiner says that he is optimistic that Haas can compete inside the top 10 and fight for points once again.
However, he added that the team has a “big mountain to climb” to fix its reliability problems.
“We had a lot of issues reliability-wise that I’m a bit scared of, but I think if we can finish the race, we have a big chance [of scoring points],” Steiner said.
“I’m optimistic, cautiously optimistic, about getting into the points and that would be success.”
“What we need to start working on is the reliability. We didn’t have it as we wanted it and we’ve got a big mountain to climb ahead of us.
“Performance-wise, it’s difficult to say because we haven’t done enough running, but I would say it doesn’t look bad.”
Haas is running a new driver line-up this year, after Kevin Magnussen was brought back last week after the team parted ways with Nikita Mazepin.
Speaking on Magnussen partnering up with Mick Schumacher, Steiner said: “I would say Kevin also has youth to him still, he’s not even 30.
“We’ve got one experienced young guy and one really young guy who needs a bit more experience.
“The strength of Kevin is he’s been through ups and downs in his career which has made him a lot tougher but he’s well prepared for this challenge.
“Mick is someone who wants success, whatever work it takes or how hard he needs to push himself to be as good as Kevin, and Kevin can be a good leader in the team because he’s more seasoned than Mick. I think we have a good pair at Haas now.”
