THIS HAAS TO BE IT
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THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS HAVEN’T been easy for Guenther Steiner. Across 2020 and 2021, the Haas team he leads scored three points – which came from just two races out of 39. The season preceding these two barren years had provided scant returns too.
Last year felt particularly bleak. With a chassis that hadn’t been developed for almost three years and a pair of rookies as its 2021 line-up, Haas was coming to races with no hope of points.
“It’s always difficult to digest,” Steiner tells GP Racing. “I mean, you know that on Sunday night you will not go home happy. When you fly back, especially if you have to go on a long flight, it’s quite tiring, because you think about ‘why the hell do I do this?’, you know?”
Going home dismayed had become routine from 2019 onwards, when an aerodynamic miscalculation meant the cars couldn’t keep their tyres within the working temperature range. It made little sense to spend money on fixing this given the impending rules overhaul, then scheduled for 2021, so Haas effectively sacrificed the following season to best prepare for the new regulations. Then COVID intervened and
