Ferrari engine at Mercedes level for Günther Steiner

From the winter tests in Barcelona, ​​Günther Steiner praised progress of the Ferrari V6 turbo/hybrid Power Unit in its 2017 version, installed both in the SF70H of the Scuderia de Maranello than in the VF17s of the American structure, when Sauber only benefits from the latest 2016 evolution.

Performing well in qualifying in Australia with sixth place Romain Grosjean, car of Kannapolis (North Carolina) demonstrated that the Italian engine had made significant progress in its new specification. A parameter that logically delights the Haas Team Principal F1 team.

“With the engine, it’s not just one area that’s better, it’s the whole package that’s improved compared to last year,” says Steiner. It is now as competitive as an engine Mercedes, if not better.

Ferrari won in Australia, but everyone is developing and trying to improve. It will always be a race for development. They have taken a good step forward, and without this help from Ferrari we would not be where we are. »

Performance as a concern

If the two VF17s were forced to abandon in Australia (suspension problem for Kevin Magnussen and hydraulic leak for Romain Grosjean), Gene Haas's men are still focusing on the search for performance.

“If you have speed, you can get reliability, believes Günther Steiner. It's not a good thing not to have the latter at the beginning, but not having speed would be much more complicated to overcome than reliability. »

In this sense, the work accomplished in particular by Dallara, in charge of the chassis, seems to have borne fruit in view of 2017. “We have progressed like everyone else, but I think we have taken a bigger step, adds the manager.

For us and Dallara, modern F1 was new last year. We made mistakes and we were a little conservative in some aspects, but we learned quickly. We did much better than last year. What came out was a car that appears to be competitive. »