Steiner: Haas F1 will develop the VF-16

Guenther Steiner. Steiner may sound like a German name but in fact Gunther Steiner is an Italian, born and brought up in the city of Bolzano in the Alto Adige region where German remains the dominant language despite the fact that modern borders means it is now part of Italy.

Guenther Steiner says Haas F1 is aiming to be in the “ballpark" with all the other midfield teams this season in terms of development.

The American outfit, which followed up its remarkable sixth place finish in its maiden race in Australia, by going one better and taking fifth in Bahrain last weekend, is now determined to build on its fabulous start to F1 2016.

Steiner also added that while development won't be on the same scale as the top teams, they have no intention of standing still when it comes to trying to improve the Ferrari-powered VF-16.

“We have developments coming, I don't know how we commit to them [yet] because our strategy is to first see what we can get out of this car," he said ahead of next weekend's Chinese Grand Prix.

“We still don't know this car. I think there is more potential which we haven't discovered. Once we have a stable platform, we will add developments. Maybe we have them for the next race. But we are not standing still," he continued.

“Will we have developments every race? No obviously not. But we will not stand still and not do anything because then you fall back.

“We will not be developing as much as the big teams but we will be in the ballpark with all the other teams in the midfield."

Asked to confirm if the planned upgrades will be more incremental, he replied: “Yes. When we find something, we evaluate it and we see if it is worthwhile to do. If the gains are small, will we just do them to do them? No.

“We evaluate every gain we make in the windtunnel and then we see if we put in full scale and go into production with it." crash.net