Haas team boss, Guenther Steiner has justified his team's tactics during the Sprint, following criticism from Mick Schumacher.

Initially, having started sixth and seventh following Sergio Perez' penalty, the pair ran together. However, having been passed by the Mexican around halfway through the race, Lewis Hamilton began to close inr.

Told to maintain his position behind his teammate, Schumacher was able to take advantage of DRS to hold off the charging Mercedes, however, once the Dane moved out of DRS range - despite Schumacher's request that he didn't - it was simply a matter of time before the German lost out to the seven-time champion.

"The fight with Lewis was quite fun," said Schumacher at race end. "It was surprising to see that we were able to fight in that moment, and the Red Bull behind us wasn't massively quicker.

"It was a nice feeling," he admitted. "I think that we could've had points today but for some reason or another we weren't allowed to do that. So it's something to be discussed. We were told to keep position, even though I felt I was quicker. We have to have a look."

"We knew pretty well what was going on, knew where we were," insisted Steiner, "and to get points for the team we had to do what we did and it was the right thing to do."

Asked if the team had considered swapping its drivers around, Steiner replied: "It wouldn't have worked, because he (Schumacher) wasn't faster, you are faster because you are in DRS.

"We spoke about this before the race," he continued, "and I explained to them it will be that if you can come out after the start behind each other the second one thinks he is faster because you are 0.9s of a second faster because of DRS effect.

"That doesn't make you faster because as soon as you go in front the other one is 0.9s faster, then as soon as you let someone by with Lewis so close he would sneak by as well and then get us after.

"We monitored everything and we did the complete right thing because otherwise we would have gone out of the points with both cars or maximum maybe only achieved one point."

"Mick could've held Lewis," said Magnussen, "it looked like it was pretty consistently impossible for Lewis to get past him when he had DRS. But he lost DRS at the end and (Lewis) got past because of that.

"The team asked me to slow down to give Mick DRS. But it was the next lap that they asked me to do that that he got overtaken. It's not that I didn't want to help out, it's just it happened in a bit of a rush."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by kenji, 11/07/2022 1:20

"@ Spindoctor...surely you're not suggesting that there exists an unofficial element of 'race fixing'?"

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2. Posted by Spindoctor, 10/07/2022 11:58

"The "DRS Train" is set to become the new big thang in F1 - even the Channel 4 commentary Team have spotted it.
The new cars can indeed follow much better, overtaking is another matter. With DRS still a major, if not THE major component in overtaking; cars working together to maintain DRS for the rearward can easily prevent faster drivers from overtaking. This characteristic is significantly increased when the "train" consists of slippery cars in front and the potential overtaker has a lower top speed.

Whilst this will make for more boring "Racing" it's perfectly permissible tactics within a team. My concern is various unofficial "B" Teams (no names, no pack drill) appear to block potential front-runners for the benefit of their "technology partners" &\or PU Suppliers."

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Steiner justifies team tactics

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