Haas expects Schumacher and Mazepin to fight for points in F1 2022

The American outfit fielded an all-rookie driver line-up in 2021, leading to its first-ever point-less season as it finished 10th in the constructors’ championship.

Haas decided not to develop its 2021 car at all with its full focus on the new regulations this season.

With both drivers now having a year’s worth of experience under their belts, Steiner is eyeing regular points finishes for both drivers this season.

“The expectation is just to be able to fight for points and fight with the other drivers who are in F1,” Steiner said. “With their rookie year we were always very open that the expectations were not high but that they had the opportunity to learn and to establish themselves in Formula One.

“Now this year we have to prove that we are on the right track with the drivers.”

Haas’ first years in F1 were relatively successful with back-to-back P8 finishes in the constructors’ championship.

2018 was its best season to date with fifth overall before dropping back in 2019 and 2020.

Steiner is hopeful Haas can return to its form of 2016 to 2018.

“I’ve said it a few times, I cannot judge how performing the car will be because obviously I haven’t seen the other cars,” he added. “But what I see, we’ve had good cars in ’18, even in ’16 and ’17 for a new team we had pretty good cars. So I just see similarities to that time. That is the only thing I can judge the performance, what I expect from the car.

“Therefore I always say I am cautiously optimistic because I see this, how Simone and his group develop the car over the last year, how hard they work on it and the results from the wind tunnel, the improvements they are doing each session. That’s the only I can compare it [to], and that makes me cautiously optimistic.

“To say we will be in the midfield, I don’t know. I obviously think we will be there, but I don’t know what the other ones are doing, so we have to wait a little bit longer. I’m pretty happy with what happened last year because we had two tough years but what kept me going was actually what the people did here back in ’21, in the design office and the aero group.”

Steiner also confirmed there will be no ‘number one driver' in the team.

“Both drivers equally in our team, they’ve got equal status contracts, so there will be no leader,” Steiner explained. “The leader will come out in each race who is doing a better job in practice and qualifying, and then when you do that then in the race obviously you start in front and you are automatically in a better position.

“But the starting point every weekend is the same, there will be no number one and number two driver.”