Haas boss Guenther Steiner was at a loss to explain his team’s poor performance at the French Grand Prix.
The American outfit endured a miserable weekend with Romain Grosjean the only retirement at his home race, while Kevin Magnussen only had the two Williams’ behind him at the end.
Typically this season it has been the tyres that have held Haas’ performance back, but not even that was blamed for what happened.
“In the four-year history, I think this was our worst weekend all in all,” Steiner stated.
“In the race, we still struggled, I don’t know why. What is bizarre to me is that a car that was good enough to qualify seventh and eighth in the first race and then sixth in Monte Carlo, all of a sudden we are second last.
“Don’t ask me what it is, I don’t know. So don’t even ask me please because I couldn’t answer it. We need to find out and it’s very disappointing to be honest, ending up in this situation but not having an understanding of it is the worst of all.
“This was a lot worse than Montreal because already on Friday and in qualifying we weren’t good. At least in Montreal, in qualifying, we got one car into Q3, but here we were happy to get one car out of Q1. So that was a lot worse.”
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Finding answers is now the main goal for the Haas chief ahead of what is traditionally a strong race for the team in Austria.
“I’m realistic, I’m not getting depressed. I’m getting… angry is the wrong word,” he said
“For me, it’s a challenge, but it’s not a positive challenge. We need to get out of this. If we get depressed you give up. We never give up. In racing, the day you give up you stay where you are. You need to get the anger out and just keep on working.
“That’s what I told the guys. I said, ‘Guys, you need to work a lot more now than you did before. There’s no point waiting for something to come, you need to go back now and understand why we are where we are. That’s the only thing you can do.
“Once you know why you are where you are, then you can find solutions. If you don’t know that one, how can you work on solutions? Then you work on everything and then you make a new car.”