Haas declared the Austrian Grand Prix as “negatively amazing” as they battled at the back of the grid.
Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen fell to a lowly 17th and 19th place, with the Williams of George Russell between them, as their recent strong record in Spielberg suffered a massive blot.
But after a season where Haas has blamed the Pirelli tyres for most of their woes, the Frenchman had to concede it is the American team that perhaps needs to raise their game.
“It’s a tough one, it’s really hard to understand where the grip is going, and how we can make the car go faster,” he said post-race.
“I had no grip on those first few laps, then just no pace in the race. It’s been a very difficult afternoon with no balance, I was fighting the car as hard as I could.
“We’re in a very difficult situation. We’ll work on it, we’ll find it, it may take some time. There’s obviously just something that we’re not doing quite right.”
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Magnussen’s race was particularly difficult after a gearbox penalty had dropped him to fifth before a drive-through penalty for pulling up ahead of his grid box for the start.
And it was the dramatic lack of performance which left team boss Guenther Steiner stunned.
“A disappointing race, obviously,” he said. “Running around like that is negatively amazing.
“After qualifying in fifth position, to then have a race like this, I can’t say anything other than it’s disappointing.
“We’ll keep working on it, try to get a better understanding of why this kind of performance is happening from qualifying to the race.
“We just do not understand it, at the moment we have no clue.”
