MR FIXIT

GUENTHER STEINER wields a torque wrench rather like you would expect a lumberjack to handle an axe. In short, with total, natural ease. Big metal tools are simply second nature to a man who spent his formative motorsport years fixing battered World Rally cars and then engineering Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz Sr to WRC success.

Steiner knows cars from the ground up, and he also knows a thing or two about handling big personalities: Sainz and McRae, then Niki Lauda and Eddie Irvine, as part of Jaguar’s F1 works team of the early noughties. Shrinking violets they were none. Looking for a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners leader for your Formula 1 team? You could do a lot worse…

That said, last season could not have gone much worse for Haas. After three seasons of overachievement and progress, Haas avoided tumbling to the bottom of F1’s pile only because of the shambles that overwhelmed Williams. The Haas VF-19 amassed fewer points than any of its predecessors. It was sporadically fast, but terribly inconsistent – unable to prevent the Pirelli tyres from immediately overheating into oblivion in races. Aerodynamic upgrades made no difference, such that Haas finished 2019 with the car in the specification it began in.