Haas won’t decide on 2019 line-up until F1 summer break

The Haas Formula 1 team will wait until the summer break at the earliest before beginning to consider its driver line-up for 2019. 

Now in its third season, Haas currently occupies eighth place in the constructors’ standings after the opening six rounds of 2018 and boasts one of the strongest packages in the tight midfield fight that is developing, though it missed out on scoring big points in Australia and Baku and struggled at last weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix. 

Kevin Magnussen has scored all of the the team’s 19 points so far this year, while Romain Grosjean’s future with Haas has been called into question following a barren run and a number of mistakes in recent races, including crashing out under the Safety Car while running sixth in Baku and causing a multi-car first-lap pile up in Spain. 

Haas team principal Günther Steiner, who has repeatedly backed his under-fire driver, said the American squad has more pressing matters to worry about at this stage of the season rather than thinking about its future driver line-up, but added Haas was “very happy” with the job Magnussen is doing. 

“We are not starting to talk even before the end of the summer break,” Steiner explained. “It is not in our minds and there is not point to even think about it because nothing is moving. 

“We focus on now trying to get as many points as possible because we left a lot of them behind already and we need to make up for that. We have enough things to focus on and not the drivers.”

Steiner once again moved to address the criticism facing Grosjean - who has recorded more than half of the US outfit’s entire F1 points total since its debut season in 2016 - during the Monaco Grand Prix, adding it is unfair to judge the Frenchman on the basis of one or two errors. 

When asked if Haas was considering Grosjean’s position within the team, Steiner told Channel 4: “We didn’t look into it. You did two silly mistakes, or two mistakes whether they are silly are not. He knows about it, he has to get out of it but then we see. 

“We have not been looking around for other people or anything yet because if you take that confidence out of him, how can we get it up again? We give him a chance. He was good to us, we try and be good to him and then we see. Let’s hope it gets better.”