Haas has made an astonishing start to their 2022 campaign by scoring points in two of the three races of the season. The American team is working more closely with Ferrari this season, which has irked some teams on the grid. Haas’s team principal Guenther Steiner mentioned it does not bother him what the other teams think of their partnership.
Haas now have an office in Maranello to be closer to its engine supplier, Ferrari. They receive not only the engines and gearbox from the Italian team but also some other transferable parts. This includes mechanical parts and suspension pieces and Haas also shares a wind tunnel with Ferrari.
This has bothered many teams on the grid, such as McLaren. McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl mentioned it is a matter of principle that no team should share their intellectual property with other teams on the grid.
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Haas team principal responds to McLaren team boss’s criticism
Steiner revealed he was not even frustrated anymore with Seidl’s comments and responded that the German does not run the FIA. He mentioned they are just following rules and guidelines set by FIA regarding their partnership with Ferrari.
“It’s not even frustrating, it’s just like ‘again’. I don’t get frustrated anymore, you get used to it. It’s normal. Andreas doesn’t run the FIA, fortunately, so he can suggest it, but there is governance in place which will define (the rules), as much as he wants to run (it),” said Steiner.
“There are, sometimes, things in the rules. If they don’t work for you, you cannot go and change it. Mercedes was winning the world championship eight years in a row.”
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“They had a very strong engine–good for them; they did a good job. Nobody said ‘we now need to change (the) engines because Mercedes is winning everything. There’s governance in place,” said the Haas team boss.
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Steiner is correct in assessing that Haas is working under the guidelines of FIA and exploiting their partnership with Ferrari completely. No team really questioned their partnership in the last two seasons when both Haas and Ferrari were struggling.
It would be interesting to see if Seidl has an answer to Guenther’s comments about the partnership.