Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner has played down Gene Haas’ statement that the new US outfit will have a “better design” than Ferrari in terms of chassis.
The American squad enters the sport on the back of a strong technical partnership with the Scuderia, as it will be supplied with a number of parts from Maranello.
A couple of months ago, team owner Haas insisted he was not fielding a Ferrari B-team and mentioned the chassis difference to back up his case. Asked about Haas’ bold claim by the official F1 website, Steiner replied:
“What Gene meant is that our chassis is different in construction than the Ferrari and we’ve had more time to work on it. But that fact is that right now it’s merely a guess as to where everyone stands.
“Everyone has been developing their cars. We’ll get a better idea as to where everyone is after testing, but we won’t really know anything until we actually start racing in Melbourne.”
Several midfield outfits have already tipped Haas to emerge as a genuine threat “straight away”, with Steiner himself recently declaring that his team was targeting a points finish for its debut race in Australia.
However, the former Jaguar and Red Bull man sounds more cautious in his latest interview, saying that Haas will need time to gel as a team. For instance, Steiner does not think that using the new-for-2016 Ferrari engine will be enough to overhaul Toro Rosso, which is set to run last year's spec of the power unit.
“We hope to line up somewhere in the lower midfield. It is always very difficult to predict how other teams will be doing before testing, but I think with Toro Rosso being a well-established team they should be in front of us, even with a one-year old engine.”
Haas confirmed two weeks ago that its first car had passed the mandatory FIA crash tests ahead of pre-season testing, which takes places from February 22-25 and March 1-4 in Barcelona.
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Key dates for the 2016 F1 season
