{"id":17751,"date":"2023-12-27T15:15:07","date_gmt":"2023-12-27T20:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=17751"},"modified":"2023-12-27T15:15:07","modified_gmt":"2023-12-27T20:15:07","slug":"guenther-steiner-haas-can-be-in-top-midfield-next-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2023\/12\/27\/guenther-steiner-haas-can-be-in-top-midfield-next-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Guenther Steiner: Haas can be in &#8220;top midfield&#8221; next season"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Guenther Steiner is optimistic that Haas can make a significant leap in 2024, drawing hope from rivals McLaren and AlphaTauri.<\/h3>\n<p>There were various success stories in F1 this season. Unfortunately for Guenther Steiner, Haas didn&#8217;t find themselves in this category. Instead, the VF-23 proved to be an extremely uncompetitive car on Sundays, making points difficult to attain for Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen.<\/p>\n<p>Despite tyre management being a clear limitation all season, Haas F1 failed to introduce any successful updates. Their only meaningful package of 2023 was in COTA, which failed to produce any additional performance.<\/p>\n<p>This was <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2023\/12\/22\/f1-news-nico-hulkenberg-open-to-sauber-move-after-2024\/\" target=\"_self\">flagged as an issue by Nico Hulkenberg, <\/a>whose frustration with the lack of mid-season development was clear. Looking ahead to 2024, this will surely become an area of contention again if they cannot compete for points regularly.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"apd66YSfThRPul25_gaLpw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1758357031\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'apd66YSfThRPul25_gaLpw',sig:'T93wne5OqdLHz6fiZ5DunT54Kll462aJp1OxZtJLO1I=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1758357031',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Guenther Steiner, however, is optimistic about his team&#8217;s chances next season. In a recent interview with Sky F1, he explained that making significant steps forward is possible:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;With the budget cap now in place, everything is possible.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;McLaren at the beginning of the season didn&#8217;t start strong, then at some stage, they were second-fastest car&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think there are top teams, midfielders and backmarkers anymore. There are top teams and the rest &#8211; in my opinion.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Everyone is in a good place financially. We ended up last this year, but we could end up at the top of the midfield next year.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a id=\"cRPBX401Sw9G57Wrqdhxjw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1682578591\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'cRPBX401Sw9G57Wrqdhxjw',sig:'tf08WRWIp0-ssTwOLzfEDW7VhQcd1bRphMSbgOLGynk=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1682578591',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<p>To some extent, Formula 1 is becoming increasingly competitive across the field. Although Red Bull was dominant this season, the chasing pack was very evenly matched throughout.<\/p>\n<p>A total of six teams finished on the podium in 2023 &#8211; with five of them featuring on a relatively regular basis. In some ways, this shows what 2024 could produce in terms of competition among the top teams.<\/p>\n<p>Even ignoring the top 10 teams, qualifying was often defined by very fine margins. Even Haas, Williams and <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2023\/12\/20\/f1-news-alphatauri-reveal-use-of-red-bull-parts-for-2024\/\" target=\"_self\">AlphaTauri were often competitive<\/a> in Q1 sessions &#8211; punishing the front-runners who executed their laps poorly.<\/p>\n<p>However, Haas is more limited than most teams in terms of capacity for development. Steiner has admitted previously that Ferrari&#8217;s progress will directly impact his own team&#8217;s 2024 package &#8211; essentially giving his team an external locus of control.<\/p>\n<p>In this sense, there are doubts about how the US team will start next season &#8211; let alone whether they can meaningfully improve as it unfolds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Guenther Steiner is optimistic that Haas can make a significant leap in 2024, drawing hope from rivals McLaren and AlphaTauri. There were various success stories in F1 this season. Unfortunately for Guenther Steiner, Haas didn&#8217;t find themselves in this category. Instead, the VF-23 proved to be an extremely uncompetitive car on Sundays, making points difficult [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4927,"featured_media":16782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2186,68,23,685,300],"class_list":["post-17751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formula-1","category-news","tag-2023-formula-1-season","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-guenther-steiner","tag-haas-f1"],"modified_by":"Jaden Diaz-Ndisang","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}