Haas Team Principal Guenther Steiner is hopeful that use of Pirelli’s softest compounds will assist its progress with tyres at this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix.
Haas struggled for race pace in Bahrain, China and Azerbaijan and pinned the deficit on the manner in which the VF-19 utilised the rubber.
Haas went on to comfortably lead Formula 1’s midfield group at the high-energy Barcelona circuit, but the next two events – Monaco and Canada – are low energy with regards to tyres.
However, Pirelli will bring its softest trio of compounds – the C3s, C4s and C5s – and Steiner is hopeful that this will alleviate any concerns Haas still holds.
“The biggest difference is the layout of the racetrack,” said Steiner, looking ahead to Monaco.
“The Barcelona track allows quite a lot of energy into the tyres, and therefore we could heat them up, which didn’t happen in the other three races.
“We were pretty confident coming to Barcelona that it would work but, again, we needed to prove it, and we know now that at circuits like this it works.
“Hopefully going forward, by using the softer type of tyres over the next few races, that will help as well, and we can get the heat into the tyre.
“Monte Carlo and Canada will not be easy for us, but we will try our best to get the tyres to work and get a good result.”
“With those [softer] tyres, we hope we can get the temperature into them and have a good result. We have to try, and we’ll only find out on Thursday what is happening.”
Steiner believes Haas’ inherently strong one-lap pace throughout the early stages of 2019 nonetheless bodes well for its prospects in Monaco.
“In Monaco, you always have to qualify well to get into the points,” he said.
“In qualifying, we’re normally very good. We’ve been in the top 10 with both cars in four races out of five. “Hopefully, we can do the same in Monte Carlo. If we get in at the front of the field in qualifying, normally in the race you can keep the other people behind – even if the race pace isn’t as good. Qualifying is crucial.”
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