Haas F1 Team Principal Guenther Steiner declared the team “half-happy” after Romain Grosjean scored points at the Singapore Grand Prix but fell down to eighth in the Constructors’ standings.
The American outfit struggled for much of the weekend at Marina Bay, battling with Williams towards the back of the grid, but in the highly attritional race made the most of the changing conditions and poor reliability to move up and add to their tally.
“We ended up with points so it’s a half-happy ending,” Steiner told Autosport. “It could have been a lot worse. We didn’t make any big mistakes. It’s better than to go away with no points.
“You could say you just got points because people dropped out. Yeah, but you need to be there to get them. That’s what I say.”
He would praise the bravery of his driver Kevin Magnussen, who is involved in several scary moments, including going side-by-side with Felipe Massa in the flat-out Turn 6 in the wet and being the first man to switch to slicks on the damp-ish track in places.
“Our guys did nothing wrong the whole race long,” he said. “One of the good moves was when Kevin went onto dry tyres. It was a ballsy move but it worked out.
“Unfortunately, he had an electronics problem. We’ll investigate that and why we had to shut it down,” he added referring to a late MGU-K issue in the power unit.
The race wasn’t without some controversy, however, as the Dane was asked to allow Grosjean through by the team, a call which Steiner would back.
“We spoke with the drivers after the race about the situation because we have to clean the air when we make these decisions, I think we took the right one.” he explained.
“We talked and cleaned the air. That’s what I do with the boys. At least they did not drive into each other or anything else stupid. Perhaps we hurt some feelings, but we explained why and that was accepted.”
Looking forward, Haas’ ambitions of finishing sixth in the Constructors’ Championship took a hit as Toro Rosso and Renault secured top six places, however, Steiner is hopeful the remaining six races will more favour the team.
“It’s these low-speed, high downforce tracks, it’s very similar to our Hungary experience,” he said, where the team scored no points. “I hope this was the last one and we can get more in the mix with the midfield like we are normally.
“I hope it’s the end of our struggles this year.”
