“We have no reference” – Haas boss Guenther Steiner has hinted they might bring in an experienced reserve driver next season to aid current season rookies Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin.
Haas have the youngest possible driver line-up this season, with both Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin in their debut F1 seasons.
They have been retained for next season, but with new regulations and a new car, it’ll be quite an ask for them to take full advantage of it.
And to ensure they do, team principal Guenther Steiner is contemplating getting in an old dog (think Robert Kubica) as the reserve driver for the team.
“You’re fully right there, we have no reference, the reference is missing. And that is an experienced driver. So I don’t know exactly how we’re going to do it, there is more than one way to do these things. We talked a little bit about it, but didn’t really do anything.
“But I want to see how they [Schumacher and Mazepin] get on. And you can see a lot from data how much they improved and stuff like this, you can get a lot of information. When we get there, we’ll find a solution also for that if we need to, and I’m not sure that we need to.
“It is always difficult if you take on reserve for a reference driver, call it like this, that will take them out of the car in testing and everything. And I think we have to get to that point at some stage.
“I will discuss it internally with the engineers, what is best for the team, but we haven’t made a decision. There’s a lot of these ideas floating around. But we haven’t taken that decision.
“And hopefully, we don’t need to do this, because that’s also not good if you put somebody in just to give you a reference, and then [the race drivers] lose time to drive it. So it’s very difficult decision to take.”
