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On Sunday, the Haas F1 Team had a weekend to forget, with both cars out due to brake issues. However, team principal Guenther Steiner was more concerned about a far more serious problem.

To be precise, the massive gulf between the Ferrari power unit and that of its rivals, Mercedes, Renault, and Honda.

Scuderia Ferrari was hobbled by the lack of pace during qualifying, but the problem wasn’t just limited to the factory team. Compared to last season, Ferrari, Haas, and Alfa Romeo were all a lot slower in qualifying.

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Haas fared a little better than its fellow Ferrari-powered teams but knew that it was nothing more than small comfort.

“I don’t know if it’s the fuel flow situation,” Steiner told Racer. “For sure there is a common denominator which is the engine in these three cars going slower from last year in qualifying.

“As everybody saw… I think it was well-documented from some of you that it seems to be very strange, and I don’t really know.”

Haas F1 was happy with race pace

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The good news was that the Haas F1 duo made up for the woeful qualifying with their race pace. Sadly, their efforts were in vain due to the brake issues.

According to Steiner, the team failed to grasp the gravity of the situation when the brakes began overheating.

The team boss admitted that they have to figure out why it overheated and sort it out by the end of the week. He is aware that brakes are an issue at Austria. However, the team underestimated how bad the situation really was.

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He concluded, “There must be something to do with the correlation or something because we didn’t expect it. We were aware that we were running hot, but you need to run on the limit. We didn’t think we were this close to the limit or over the limit.

“For sure running under the same circumstances would help. Because then you’ve got the actual data and the facts, otherwise it’s just a simulation. We need to look into why it didn’t match our simulations.”