Haas boss Guenther Steiner says there is “no way” the team can pin any of the blame for its 2019 slump on race drivers Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean.
Haas struggled to fully understand and develop its VF-19, with the team’s performance deficit most pronounced in race trim.
As a consequence Haas scored only 28 points and classified ninth in the Constructors’ Championship, marking its worst return since it joined Formula 1 in 2016.
“I think in no way can I attribute our not-so-good season to them, and therefore we stay with the same driver pairing,” said Steiner.
“I think we need to be honest and say they couldn’t have done better with the car.
“You always can do better when you’re not running into each other, but they just tried too hard at some stage.
“I don’t think I can jump to a conclusion that they didn’t do a good job this year.”
Haas’ problematic 2019 campaign came off the back of a strong 2018 season, in which it finished fifth in the standings, and challenged Renault for fourth overall.
“I think the positive you can take is like last year, we went quite high for where we should be, and it was a great feeling, and then I think you live a little bit on that high, and you cannot assume that you will stay on a high,” said Steiner.
“There is not one specific thing you learn, but I think sometimes, we need to be a little bit more critical of what we are doing ourselves, even if it all looks good, it doesn’t mean it is good.
“But there is not one thing that I could tell you we need to look after more this, that and the other. It’s more like in general, we need to do a better job.”
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