Haas chief Guenther Steiner admits it was no surprise the team slipped back down the field during the Japanese Grand Prix.
Once again, the American squad showed better pace in qualifying, at least through Romain Grosjean who made it into Q3 in 10th, this after Kevin Magnussen had crashed out in Q1 in blustery conditions.
However, any hopes of the Frenchman scoring his first points since Hockenheim quickly vanished as he dropped down to 15th, while his teammate only managed to pass the two Williams in 17th.
“No, it’s just more of the same,” Steiner said. “We now know that these things happen, they are never nice but they actually happen.
“You go into the race always knowing that at some stage we will have an issue with the tyre because we cannot generate the heat we need to make the tyre work.
“As the blue flags come in you slow down, the tyre gets cold, we cannot get the heat back in and you fall back. It sounds almost too simple not to have a solution for it but that is what is happening.
“So even if we can qualify on one lap normally decently – going into Q3 is still an achievement in my opinion – but we cannot hold on in the race for this reason. We just cannot keep the heat in the tyres.”
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Magnussen, who finished eighth in Sochi two weeks earlier, doesn’t think the troublesome Pirelli tyres accounted for everything, at least in his case.
“I just didn’t hook it up today, we messed up some strategy. It wasn’t terrible in terms of tyres and pace, not like previous races where we have been hopeless because of whatever,” he commented.
“If we had hooked everything up, if I had started up where I should have and got as good a start as I did get, then I would have been in a much better position.
“So probably with a better pit stop and strategy, we could have scored some points. It’s frustrating.”
In a year when adapting to the Pirelli rubber has been Haas’ main Achilles Heel, and given their current situation trying to find a solution to their weaknesses, the Dane admits tyre performance is still a concern.
“Yeah exactly, because these tyres are what they are. You don’t need a big problem to then suffer from a big problem with the tyres, the effect on the tyres is huge.”