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Gunther Steiner says Haas’s Formula 1 rivals cannot believe how unlucky the team has been so far in 2018.
Despite its Ferrari-powered car showing promise, Haas is only eighth in the constructors’ championship after an incident-packed start to the campaign.
It has lost points through a mixture of errors, including pitstop problems during the Australian Grand Prix while Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean were running fourth and fifth, or bizarre circumstance like Grosjean hitting a groundhog in practice in Canada and suffering an engine problem when leaving the pits in qualifying.
Despite suggesting Haas could do with more luck, team principal Steiner was clear that his team could not rely solely on that for its results to improve.
“You never stop and say ‘we need a break’ and wait until you get lucky,” explained Steiner after the Canadian Grand Prix. “We always try to do our best and come up with our best we can do.
“We showed in Canada where Kevin was struggling on Friday but still managed to quality 11th. And what happened with Romain in the end, we have not a lot of influence on that.
“We don’t want to find excuses with that. It is one of the circumstances. We are very honest with ourselves.”
When asked if he felt Haas deserved a change in luck, Steiner said: “I wouldn’t say deserve it because that is a little bit presumptuous. But we wish [for it], because other teams have come to me to say, ‘what have you done to get it all?’
“For me, the weirdest thing is the groundhog running into us. There are 20 cars out there, a groundhog on its own, and we are going to hit it! And on the nose, not on the wing!
“If you try to do that, you can try for a 1000 years and it will never happen. It is one of these freak things.
“We don’t deserve it – but we need to work hard and it will come to us. [You have to] hope that lady luck comes to you.”
Although Haas has failed to score points in the last two races, Steiner said the team was not concerned about the overall performance of its car.
“What gets you over the disappointment is that four weeks ago in Barcelona we were the best of the rest by a good margin,” he said.
“We haven’t lost that. Is it circumstances? You always try to analyse this and to try to get better for the next event.”