F1 News: Guenther Steiner On Haas' Upcoming 2023 Season

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has spoken about the upcoming 2023 season for the team and that the new driver line-up and staff will put them "in a better place" than 2022.

The team announced shortly after the 2022 season that they were not extending Mick Schumacher's contract and the Nico Hulkenberg will be taking his seat on the team.

Haas achieved eighth place in the constructor's championship in 2022 and a highlight of the season was Kevin Magnussen taking the first team pole position, as well as his first career pole, at the Brazilian Grand Prix for the Saturday sprint race.

During an appearance on the Beyond The Grid podcast, Steiner explained:

“I think we are in a better place. In 2018, we had a very good year, ‘19, our car was not up to what we wanted it to be. And then ‘20 came, we quite a few backward hits, I would say, in a very short period of time.

“[In] ‘19, our car wasn’t good. We tried to recover, then 2020 came, we got again, a slap in our face, because we didn’t know if we [could] continue.

“And then we had to come up with ‘21 with having two rookie drivers. But now it’s ’22, we’ve made a big step. So I think in one or two years, our aim is to be where we left off in ‘18.”

The team have managed to benefit from the cost cap regulations being brought in as they have been able to bring on some staff from Ferrari who were facing being let go. This includes Ferrari's former chief designer, Simone Resta, who has joined Haas as the technical director.

Steiner continued:

“Even if you get the people, you need to get them to work as a team, and Simone did that in three, four months, and we started development, I would say, intensively, March in ’21.

“If you see what the guys did in eight months starting, I wouldn’t say from zero, but from 50%, to come up with a car, where we moved on from last year to this one and therefore, I’m confident that going forward with the step we did in ‘21, we can keep on moving up.

“As I say, I’m cautiously confident looking at next year that these guys did again a good job, but not because they just worked together for a year, they’re just getting better or the organisation is getting better. They’re just more efficient, they know each other. They know their weak points, their good points, everything.

“So they’re working just like a team now, and that should give us a better car for the future – and that is where we came up in the last two years.”