Haas Team Principal Guenther Steiner says the “frail” nature of Renault’s engine situation could play into its hands in the battle for sixth position in the Constructors’ Championship.
With the leading five positions already determined, the focus has switched to the scrap for sixth, with Toro Rosso, Renault and Haas split by just six points.
Renault has struggled for reliability in recent rounds, and had to compromise performance in favour of reliability in Brazil, having suffered a spate of failures in Mexico.
Steiner, who heads the Ferrari-powered Haas operation, believes the situation could aid the squad, but is wary that Haas needs to extract the maximum from its VF-17 in order to boost its chances.
“I think with the engine we don’t have an issue, you can always have a failure but there’s no bigger risk [compared to other races], the engine this year pretty reliable,” he said.
“Renault seems to be a little bit frail at the moment in all three teams so that could come our way, but we still need to get our car in the points.
“Even if they finish behind us, and we are 11th or 12th nothing changes, so we need to do a very good race weekend and then maybe hoping they have some issues.”
Steiner insists that overhauling Renault and Toro Rosso is not motivated purely by the financial gain, but by the prestige of improving on its 2016 classification by two places.
“Everything makes a difference, even $100,000, you’d rather have it than not have it,” he said.
“But more than the money is how close we were and if we missed it. If we could have six points more we would be ‘it’s a great season from eighth to sixth, from eighth to eighth it’s like ‘yeah we did more of the same’.
“You think of the money but the money is not everything. It’s racing, it’s sport, some you win, some you lose.
“But it’s not lost yet, we haven’t given up, it will be difficult, we will try to get the best out of it we can.”
