Haas’ Guenther Steiner: “We had three days of testing but really we only managed one”

Guenther Steiner feels the Haas F1 Team are behind the eight ball at this stage of pre-season testing after managing only nine laps on the third and final day at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Friday.

An issue within the oil system was unfixable in the time available, meaning Nikita Mazepin managed only the nine laps in the morning session and prevented Mick Schumacher from taking his turn behind the wheel of the VF-22 in the afternoon.

After running an all-white livery in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the team could only manage one hundred and fifty-nine laps across the three days, significantly less than most of the other teams.

Steiner, the Team Principal at Haas, says the team will hope to have put all their gremlins behind them when testing resumes at the Bahrain International Circuit next month, the final test before the season gets underway at the same track.

“Today we could unfortunately only do nine laps – we had an issue with the oil system in the engine,” said Steiner.  “There was a leak that we couldn’t sort over the day, so we didn’t do a lot of running.

“About the rest of the test – the first day was a little bit clumsy, I would say, but we learned enough that on the second day we were well prepared. The second day was actually pretty good, we learned a lot, if you think we had three days of testing but really we only managed one.

“I think we made good progress. Now we have to get prepared for Bahrain. We have information – we know what to do and we will get it done. Hopefully in Bahrain we don’t have any gremlins.”