Haas F1 Boss Admits ‘Frustrating’ Issues Involving Grosjean
Team Principal Guenther Steiner explains that they ‘need to stop losing points’ and making costly mistakes.
Many would argue that, along with Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas, Romain Grosjean is having the toughest luck of any driver in 2018—at least, that's how it started.
The season kicked off in Melbourne with both Haas F1 entries showing strong form before a pair of gut-wrenching mistakes on pit lane cost the team its shot at a points finish. It continued in Bahrain and China where Grosjean placed in the bottom half of the field, and once more in Baku as the Frenchman crashed while driving behind the safety car.
After that, Grosjean's misfortune started to look less like bad luck and more like avoidable mistakes. A Lap 1 incident forced yet another DNF for the veteran driver at Catalunya while also knocking out Pierre Gasly and Nico Hulkenberg, earning him a grid penalty for the next Grand Prix in the process.
Grosjean failed to score points in every race leading up to the Austrian GP before wowing with a P4 finish at the Red Bull Ring. This welcomed result showed a hopeful turn in luck for the team, but as he crashed out of last weekend's contest at Silverstone, Haas boss Guenther Steiner is becoming tired of Grosjean's consistent woes.
In an interview with RaceFans, Steiner explained that this same trend cannot continue throughout the rest of the year if Haas wants to be successful—and, perhaps, if Grosjean wants to keep his job.
“I wouldn’t call this bad luck,” said Steiner to RaceFans. “It’s getting frustrating."
“We all hope for him that we are going up and now we are down in the dumps again and we need to get out again," Steiner continued. “We will get out of it, it’s always hard work, but we should pour hard work into scoring points instead of getting up again. We should be up and trying to hit high but at the moment we are using a lot of energy just to get out of the dumps always. Always chasing instead of trying to move ahead.”
Steiner explained that he plans on standing behind Grosjean, but continued mishaps will not be supported. “That’s what I need to [do] because we need to succeed as a team," he added.
The longtime motorsport boss warned of a "tipping point" at which such gaffes will become more seriously scrutinized.
“I don’t know where the tipping point is. I’m not there yet. But at some stage, as I said before, we need to stop losing points. And that is the tipping point," Steiner claimed. “We cannot keep on doing this. We are now through half the season and we must have lost a lot of points because of our own mistakes. And this is actually not acceptable.”
