Haas F1 boss Steiner frustrated with “too frequent and too heavy” crashes
Mick Schumacher was unable to take part in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix after the German crashed heavily towards the end of final practice on Saturday morning.
It marked the second time this season that an FP3 shunt had ruled Schumacher out of qualifying, following an accident at Monaco earlier in the year. Schumacher also crashed out at the end of Q1 at the French Grand Prix, preventing him from contesting Q2.
And Steiner admitted he is becoming frustrated with the frequency of accidents occurring for his rookie driver.
"Mick in the last five races had quite a few big ones," Steiner said. "If you have a spin or something like this, that happens. But these accidents are quite heavy, it’s a lot of money, and for no good reason.
"So we have to work on it, to get better on that one. And, obviously, the budget is the budget and you need to stick to it. You always have to have ideas how to get around it when you have these accidents.
“But at the moment, obviously we feel it, but we can still deal with it. But soon we will need to find new ways to overcome this, because they're getting a little bit too frequent and too heavy.”
Steiner feels Schumacher should have learned by now when to take risks and when to hold back.
“Yeah, I actually think so, by now we should know where we stand,” he said.
“In FP3 you compromise yourself not taking part in qualifying and the risk is always there because it’s only two hours away from when you finish FP3 to qualifying. Obviously they need to learn out of this. We had a few and that’s OK, but we need to get better at this.
Steiner added: “We make too many mistakes, that is the problem. Or I would say, in defence of Nikita, I shouldn't use the plural, because in the last races he behaved very well.
"He did very well. He didn't do any damage or anything. And Mick, just the last races, we had some accidents, which we need to get better at.”
While Steiner acknowledged that Haas was prepared to accept mistakes given it had elected to field an all-rookie line-up, he warned the crashes are starting to take their toll on the team’s finances.
“You always plan for accidents, especially with rookie drivers, but I think we have reached a point now where we need to work on it to have less accidents for the rest of the season,” he explained.
"From our side, we just have to make plans how we spend our money. We know exactly what we are doing on parts and this but to deal with the drivers, it's mainly just maybe sitting down and explain the big picture again, that sometimes you need to take risk but you take risk if there is opportunity.
"If there is no opportunity, I never take risks personally, because there's nothing to be gained. And I think at the moment, we know that there is not a lot to be gained, especially not in FP3, and we shouldn't take this risk in FP3."
