Haas F1 Team boss Guenther Steiner has provided further detail as to why the squad opted to retain Romain Grosjean over potentially recruiting Nico Hulkenberg.
Haas had been evaluating whether to keep hold of Grosjean for a fifth season or sign Hulkenberg, out of contact in the wake of being replaced by Esteban Ocon at Renault.
The team announced on Thursday afternoon that it had decided to keep Grosjean.
Going into detail on the decision, Steiner said: “It was a close call, you know, because they are both very good drivers, and I hope Nico stays in F1 as I like him and he’s a good driver.
“In the end we decided to stay with Romain. He is with the team since four years. We know his highs and his lows, we know on a good day he’s a very good driver, he knows the team very well.
“The biggest reason is our car this year is not performing as we want it to perform which in the end has nothing to do with the drivers we have in the car.
“It is the car, we are open about that, conscious about that. And now changing driver, I don’t know if it would help us to make the car better. It could. But it could also not. Because the new guy wouldn’t know where we start off.
“Romain was a big part of getting the understanding of why we are wrong with the car at the moment, he was a big help.
“We know what we have got and we can work with that. That’s why we took the decision to stay with Romain for another year.”
Steiner added that he and Gene Haas were aligned with the call, praising the team owner for being able to view the decision with a less emotional stance.
“Gene is very good at these things,” said Steiner.
“He doesn’t take a harsh approach like I would sometimes do.
“He’s a little bit more balanced maybe than me. We were aligned and we spoke a lot about the plus minuses, figuring out what is good, it’s good to have someone to bounce off, especially someone like Gene.
“He’s been doing this a long time and he sees this from another perspective. I’m very close to everything so sometimes emotions come in the way, but he’s distant and it’s sometimes better to see it like this.”
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