13/07/2018
NEWS STORY
Currently fifth in the constructor standings, 19 points down on Renault and just 2 clear of Force India, but for some bad luck - and equally bad driving - the American team might actually have been a firm fourth in the standings.
At Silverstone, as in Austria a week earlier, Haas was clearly best of the rest, yet in the wake of a first lap collision involving both its drivers and a subsequent clash involving Romain Grosjean and Carlos Sainz, the team left the Northamptonshire track with just two points.
While a brace of unsafe releases in Melbourne got the season off to a less than perfect start, things haven't been helped by Grosjean's continued erraticism.
Now, team boss Guenther Steiner warns enough is enough.
"I am not happy," he said of Sunday's first lap clash, according to ESPN. "They can happen but it shouldn't happen. We need to be better than that.
"That's the conclusion out of this," he continued. "We need to stop losing points.
"We are in the points now but we lose them, we do it ourselves. While last year we needed to get into the points, now in the moment we need to stop falling out of the points so that's what we need to get better at.
"The first lap incident, you have no control over anything," he admits. "It's down to the drivers and sometimes stuff happens which shouldn't happen. I am sure Romain didn't do it on purpose, why would he drive into his teammate?
"But it happens so the drivers need to get better at avoiding these situations as at that point the team can't do anything. I am not a race car driver."
In the face of mounting criticism of Grosjean, who finally appeared to come good in Austria, only to throw it all away again a week later, Steiner said: "I will be supportive because that is what I need to be because we want to succeed as a team.
"I don't know where the tipping point is," he added. "I am not there yet but at some stage, as I said before, we need to stop losing points... that is the tipping point.
"We can't keep on doing this. We are through half of the season and we must have lost a lot of points because of our own mistakes and that is not acceptable."