Haas team boss Gunther Steiner says his Formula 1 team is braced for a tough Mexican Grand Prix, because the circuit presents “one of the worst scenarios” for the squad.
Mexico was one of the worst F1 events for Haas in its debut season last year, with Romain Grosjean qualifying slowest of all and beating only Esteban Ocon’s Manor in the race, finishing one place behind team-mate Esteban Gutierrez.
Mexico City’s high altitude makes cooling the cars difficult, something Haas has often struggled with, and the thin air also renders the aerodynamics inefficient, robbing them of grip despite running in high-downforce configuration.
Haas brought an upgrade to the last race in the United States, but endured a difficult weekend and Steiner expects an even tougher one in Mexico.
“Austin was not only downforce, there were a few other factors coming into why we didn’t perform,” Steiner said.
“Here, everything you’ve got, you need, and I don’t think we’ve got enough.
“It is a tough race, because being at high altitude the cooling is difficult, the downforce isn’t there.
“For our car, for sure, it’s one of the worst scenarios, if not the worst one.
“Our prediction is we’ll struggle, but even if we know we will struggle, we still need to work hard because other people will struggle as well.
“We just have to get the best out of it.”
Steiner said Haas would run back-to-back tests in first practice in Mexico, to make sure its Austin upgrade is working correctly.
“It delivered something but with all the troubles we had, we need to evaluate it a little bit more here and what it is actually doing,” he added.
“We’ll try to do something in FP1 to compare data – Antonio [Giovinazzi] will have the old one, Kevin [Magnussen] will have the new one.”