Haas chief Guenther Steiner admits focusing on data over driver feedback was a key error in developing their 2019 car.
Despite a strong start, the American outfit has endured a tough season only scoring in five of the 17 races so far and sitting ninth in the Constructors’ standings.
Chronic tyre issues have been front and centre of Haas’ lack of race pace and when asked what the team will do differently for next season, Steiner noted…
“A lot. It’s like, I don’t want to go into the specifics of technical stuff, but we should have listened a little bit more to the drivers when they gave their opinion about what the car is doing and whatnot,” he explained via Crash.net.
“That’s what we have to learn out of this and now I think we need to get what drivers say correlated with what the numbers say and get an understanding so we can move forward. As I said, we would have done a lot different from Barcelona onwards.”
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In an effort to find solutions, Haas has been experimenting with different specs of the VF-19 chassis, notably, Romain Grosjean has raced the car as used in Australia while teammate Kevin Magnussen has driven the latest updates.
That changed slightly after the summer break, with Steiner revealing their current approach.
“We now use the spec as a little bit of a set-up tool, we can interchange different floors and different things,” he said.
“We cannot compare it now what it actually is, it’s hybrid! That’s the best way to explain it.”
But the Haas chief accepts it will likely not be before next year until any meaningful progress is seen towards overcoming their weaknesses.
“Not short-term. We know where we are and why we are where we are, but to fix it is a different issue and I don’t know if we can get on top of it this year consistently,” he admitted.
“There’s only four races left anyway but maybe we’ve got one or the other good day in general.
“It’s not like I can tell you that in the next two races we will bring an upgrade that will sort the problem, we just need to make sure that this doesn’t happen next year because it’s quite consuming.”