Haas boss Guenther Steiner says he is considering implementing team orders after another race clash between Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean.
Magnussen and Grosjean brushed wheels in Spain, after which they were given a warning, while Steiner was furious in the wake of their first-lap collision in Britain.
Haas is still trying to understand why its VF-19 is experiencing such performance fluctuation, with Magnussen running the newest-spec car while Grosjean is using a Melbourne-spec package.
The close battles, and clashes, between the drivers mean Haas is getting distracted from the main issues that it needs to resolve.
“I am just going to call the race, that’s my job now,” said Steiner. “Tell them what to do.“
“I need to think about it but there are not many options. I think at some stage something needs to be done and I normally try to avoid that as you know, I like racing, I think that’s what we should be doing.
“But if it always works against us I can’t keep letting it happen. We were lucky that nothing got (damaged) but it could have happened again.”
“It doesn’t help to find a solution. It doesn’t help to be always constructive because I’m thinking about things I shouldn’t be thinking about.
“I should be thinking about everything else. It’s a lot going on, so the more you can focus on your real issue the better it will be.”
Grosjean reverted to a Melbourne-spec car in Britain, having immediately wanted to abandon the update Haas introduced in Spain, and qualified ahead of Magnussen.
But Magnussen’s pace fluctuated throughout the weekend, placing fifth in FP3, and Steiner says the lack of viable conclusions is making Haas’ job even more challenging.
“If we had fully understood it we would know what to do next,” he added.
“We’re still to understand where we are with it. This is the strangest car I have ever worked with. You can qualify sixth, which in reality is eighth [due to Ferrari’s problems], I know that, but we qualify fifth sometimes and then in the race you just drop off to second last. It’s amazing you know?
“I have never… I mean, there hasn’t been many times a car like this has been around. I don’t remember anything like this and therefore it is even more difficult because you cannot even go back.
“If we are always slow… but Kevin without the lock-up would have made it into Q3 pretty easy, but then again in the race we end up being slow. I’m baffled.
“If we had come to the conclusion that the Melbourne car is faster then we would change to the Melbourne car, but we haven’t come to that conclusion because in FP3 look at the time from Kevin. It was an amazing time. Where did it come from? I don’t know.”
Haas will continue to run a split car specification at this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix.
