'A lot of people shopping' for Haas 2019 F1 seat

Haas Formula 1 chief Günther Steiner has claimed there is significant interest from drivers to join the team for the 2019 season, but stressed the team would be making no decision on its future line-up until after the summer break.

In just its third F1 season, Haas has been one of the stand-out performers in the midfield pack through 2018. The American team sits fifth in the constructors' championship with nine races to go, and is just 16 points behind Renault in P4.

The team's displays have been such that there is a high level of interest from drivers to join for 2019, with Steiner saying there has been little need for Haas to go chasing other drivers.

"I wouldn’t say we are shopping around. A lot of people are shopping with us, put it this way," Steiner said.

"There are people asking for obvious reasons and they want to see what we are doing. If somebody is asking that doesn’t mean they want to come, in my opinion, they might just be asking to see what other people are doing.

"We will decide after the holiday what we are going to do, but at the moment we don’t think about it. There are a lot of people asking, and it is part of my job to know what is happening in the marketplace."

Kevin Magnussen has led the team's charge by racking up more than two-thirds of its points, with teammate Romain Grosjean only reaching the top 10 on three occasions, having failed to score through the opening eight races of the season.

Haas has an option on Magnussen for 2019 that it is widely expected to trigger, but Grosjean's future is less certain, with Sergio Perez being linked to Haas as a possible replacement given the Frenchman's yo-yoing form.

Steiner believes the whole driver market will hinge largely on Ferrari and Renault's moves in the coming weeks, with the rest of the pieces falling into place from there.

"One of the first moves is to decide what Ferrari is going to do for the future, what Renault is going to do for the future, and then we small guys come in," Steiner said.

"I wouldn’t say we have to wait on their decisions, but that could trigger the market. I didn’t say that I want to decide after they do because maybe we have decided already without knowing what they are doing. I’m just saying them deciding will trigger the market because then we have the facts of what somebody is doing.

"It’s not just asking around and presuming then we have got facts. If someone announces something then we have actual facts to work with. At the moment everyone is staying the same, because no-one has done anything."