'We knew the car wouldn't be any better, so why waste money?'

Guenther Steiner, the man who still heads the American Haas racing team, has admitted in an interview to having known about what appears to be his team's dramatic current form much before the start of the season, and argues that, with 2021 being an interim year, a major investment would have been 'madness'.

“The only development we did was to adapt to the rules for this year so you cannot expect the car to get any better", Steiner admitted in conversation with Formula1.com. "With the rule change, the car actually got worse as we took downforce away so it’s a case of how little can you do?"

"When we started the development in November last year we knew we couldn’t catch up", the team principal continued. “Why would you waste [money]? The car was bad in ’19, it didn’t get a lot better in ’20 and all of a sudden we invest a year of development in a car that’s only going to do 23 races? I mean that would be complete madness in my opinion."

Steiner already gives up

"“For me, yes we’ll be [at the] back this year, but next year hopefully we can - or the aim is to - get back to where we were in 2018.” In 2018, the team finished fifth and seemed well on their way to a regular spot in the midfield. The following two seasons, however, the team finished ninth, and it seems there won't be much more to it this year either.