Haas team boss Guenther Steiner believes those expecting Formula 1’s midfield teams to suddenly improve in 2021 are “naive”.
There’s no doubt that the big rule changes coming for next season have created a sense of hope that the domination by Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari can be challenged as all new cars are introduced.
Haas is one team that could potentially benefit most from the overhaul, however, as owner Gene Haas considers whether to continue in F1, Steiner has played down the prospect of a big jump up the grid.
“It’s very naive. It’s not going to happen,” he said via Motorsport. “I think it’s difficult to say what will convince him [Gene Haas], he needs to convince himself, that’s how I see it.
“He understands that best. I don’t think I can do a lot to convince him, he needs to convince himself that this is what he wants to do, that this is what he wants to use his marketing money to invest in.
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“He’s got a good enough understanding that if I tell him he can win in 2021, he might say ‘he doesn’t know what he’s doing’. I would have to agree with him. So, I don’t know.
“But, as I said, there are still so many open issues here that at the moment I don’t know if he should make a decision now.”
Haas also begin this season eager to put a miserable 2019 behind them, as a chronic issue with the tyres saw them score in just five races en route to ninth in the Constructors’ standings.
“[Bahrain was] the first time it came to light that something isn’t right, and we found we could not manage the tyres,” Steiner said of the problems the American squad faced.
“Then we tried to work with the tyre, tried to influence the tyre from the outside, instead of going down to see if we had an aero problem because the car was good in qualifying.
“Barcelona, again we weren’t sure if it worked or not, but when you get a good result you believe in it.
“Maybe by having these good results at the beginning we were a little bit blindsided having come off a season like 2018, which was very good,” he added.
“Maybe we were a little bit overconfident – we just know it now.
“Not knowing where you are, you don’t react properly, and once you really understand what it is [causing the problems] – which was summer break time – it’s too late.
“After the summer break you don’t think of the race track anymore, we were just too far off. So it was better to go back and focus on 2020.”