Haas F1: “Always risky to jump into cold water”

Günther Steiner, Haas Team Principal F1 Team, is confident about the beginnings of its team which will enter the premier single-seater discipline in 2016, even if the regulations revised in 2017 will force the American team, which has around 200 people, to resume a good part of its work.

The former technical director of Jaguar F1 and Red Bull Racing believes that the plans of Gene Haas, the team owner, would not have been changed if the announcement of future rule changes had been made earlier.

« It's always risky to jump into cold water. Changes are constant here », he said on the official F1 website. “You would think that 2017 would not go well and that we should aim for 2018. But that was not the case for us. We have established our strategy: we want to be there and we do not want to go back. There's nothing official yet for 2017...and that's not a problem for us. »

If Esteban Gutiérrez should be confirmed at the end of September (see: n°2028 of AUTOhebdo), Haas F1 Team would like to train an experienced crew. The names of Jean-Éric Vergne, Kevin Magnussen ou Romain Grosjean (depending on the agreement between Lotus F1 Team and Renault) are mentioned. “There is no American pilot planned at the moment. There are contenders in GP2 and in F3, but it would be complicated from both points of view to have a rookie in a new team”, added Günther Steiner.