Haas team boss Guenther Steiner has said the team's vocal critics wouldn't care so much if the team was at the back of the pack.
Haas' model of being closely aligned with Ferrari by buying as much as the rules allow it to do so from the Italian manufacturer, plus using its facilities and then subcontracting much of its own design work to Dallara, has been met with a negative reaction from some Formula 1 teams.
However Steiner has refuted claims they're basically running a Ferrari B-team and insists everything they've done is within the rules.
"I don’t really care," Steiner said of the criticism. "Some of the people that say that, I don’t really know what they mean by it. I think they don’t know what they mean with it.
"It’s normally the people that cannot understand why we’re doing such a good job. They just say we’re copying Ferrari. There are clearly written rules – what you can and can’t do – and we do everything to the rulebook. I don’t really care if they have a bad opinion about us."
He also believes it's only because they've been so successful with the way they operate that critics have even raised the subject, insisting they wouldn't batter an eyelid if Haas were running at the bottom.
"Nobody would care if we were at the bottom," he added. "Everybody would be happy.
"That’s what everyone was expecting. That’s where they thought we would be when we got into Formula 1. It’s developed over the years with people getting more critical.
"It goes hand-in-hand with our classifications. After a while, you get used to it. You live with it and don’t care."
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