Haas head into the 2020 season feeling “cautious” not to avoid a repeat of last year’s mistakes.
2019 started well for the American team, with Kevin Magnussen finishing sixth in Australia, but after that point, it all went downhill as tyre issues and a lack of race pace saw them drop down the field most Sunday’s despite often solid qualifying performance.
By the end of the year, Haas would finish a lowly ninth in the Constructors’ standings having spent the second half of the season trying to find solutions to their problems.
And team boss Guenther Steiner does think there has been progress in doing so.
“I’m taking things on board, we are not going to make mistakes like last season,” he was quoted by F1i.com.
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“We are working a little bit differently. There can still be mistakes, but I think if I would say we didn’t learn our lesson and be stupid like last year that wouldn’t make me feel great.
“We learned our lesson. We are humble, and we’ll try to be like two years ago again. Let’s speak about two years ago.”
Indeed two years ago, Haas would finish fifth in the Teams’ Championship, their best finish in four years on the grid.
And having failed to listen to initial driver concerns with last year’s car, doing so has offered some hope for the season to come.
“Obviously a driver is never happy, and especially if you think what happened to us last year,” Steiner admitted. “We were very happy with it, then it is ended up not to be good!
“Everybody’s very cautious, we are very cautious in our prediction for this season. We don’t want to be, ‘It’s all good, it’s all good’ and then fall hard.
“We do a diligent job and try to do the best and see where it takes us. We are a little bit of a dark horse because we play it differently.
“We change around a lot of things. Normally here there is a pattern in it, and we’re changing the pattern a little bit.”