Team boss Guenther Steiner is remaining hopeful Gene Haas won’t pull his team out of Formula 1 after 2020.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, there were big question marks being raised over the future of the American squad, with Haas frustrated at the poor results and the high costs of competition.
And his mood won’t have been improved by the first five races of this season either, with Haas still near the back of the grid and scoring just one point so far.
“I don’t know his [Gene’s] state of mind right now but the results, we were not happy,” Steiner was quoted by RaceFans.
“But he knows that we are having a tough year and it will continue tough, so I think he’s somewhere in between.”
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As for the future of Haas in F1, the budget cap and other regulatory changes have been welcomed by the team and Steiner is confident they will continue.
“This question is always difficult to answer for your bosses, for the team owner, how his state is. I think he’s alright. Obviously, he’s not happy with the results, but the rest he’s alright,” he added.
“I think we are in a good point and hopefully signing the Concorde Agreement in the next weeks.”
Another question has been the future of their current drivers, Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean, with the latter in particular rumoured to be in potentially his last year in F1.
But any decisions on that, according to Steiner, will have to wait.
“Timing-wise at the moment the thing to do is to tidy up the Concorde Agreement in the near future and then speak about drivers,” he said.
“We haven’t even looked or started to talk about drivers. I didn’t speak to Gene about it. At the moment we have got a lot of other things to do first and then we can speak about drivers.”
