$250K Masterstroke Gives Haas Head Start but Minimizes Guenther Steiner’s Headspace

With season 5 of Drive to Survive season out today, many tales of the Pit wall will surface today. However, one tale that is making the rounds without the contribution of the Netflix docuseries is the clever move of the American team, Haas. The brilliant step has led them to save $250,000 but on the downside has given Guenther Steiner a bit of a claustrophobic situation to deal with.

Pit wall stand, also known as Prat Perch, has helped the Haas team save hundreds of dollars. The team used to trot the globe with a two-part pit stand with six seats, of which only four were really ever used. The ingenuity that the team has deployed has led the team to cut down to only one part of the pit wall, i.e. now only three seats will be available. Haas team principal Steiner, manager Peter Crolla and director of engineering Ayao Komatsu will take charge of the seats.

As quoted by Motorsport.com, Steiner said, “When you need to make efficiency, you look in everything. When you need money to invest in development, because we have the cost cap, where do you put it?”

He further added, “You have six people out there, or a quarter of a million on car updates? I know what we are doing. And the guys came up with that idea, I said if I need to stay inside, I have no problems as well. I don’t need to be there. They said with three seats we can cover what we need to cover, and we rearrange. But it’s mainly a saving to put that money into development because we are at the cost cap.”

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With the money saved, Haas already knows what to do with it. And the efforts may see them making even better progress than last year.

Haas TP Guenther Steiner has a plan in place

The cost cap breach which saw Red Bull penalized last year is an equalizing factor. While the cost cap is ideally in place for the bigger outfits, one might see the low-budget Haas team inch closer to the threshold. With the new sponsorship from MoneyGram to employ the erudite to deploy only half of the pit wall, the team may have a roadmap ahead of itself. And the TP Steiner echoes the emotion.

He said, “We started already with the upgrades.” He further stated, “When you have a plan in place, like this year, we are a lot better prepared. So we have got a plan in place and hopefully we get some upgrades soon. If they show results in the wind tunnel, for sure we’ll make them and bring them to the racetrack.”

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With an eight-place finish last year, the team already made good progress. What do you think can happen with saved costs and a new driver lineup?