Haas to take more control from Ferrari during first season in F1

Haas enters its first grand prix this weekend on the backfoot following a range of reliability issues with the VF16 during the second pre-season test, including with the turbocharger.

To aid its entry into F1, Haas has turned to Ferrari for its power-unit and a number of other parts, but he feels the team cannot settle on relying on the supplier.

"If anything is less than perfect, unfortunately they [Ferrari] are very cautious about taking these engines and putting them on the track," said Haas.

"If there is any problem from the telemetry they won't put it out there until they solve the problem.

"In the first test we had just a minor knick in a cable that caused a bit of a misfire in the engine, so we had to fix that, and it took time to find that cable.

"Of course, we're relying very heavily on Ferrari. That [the turbocharger] was an unfortunate problem, but they are very cautious.

"If they have a problem with something they want to investigate it.

"The problem with the turbocharger is that if it has any kind of problem it can explode, so they were cautious not to exceed any parameters on them that may cause some sort of catastrophic failure."

Haas is keen to avoid any finger-pointing in Ferrari's direction, which is why he feels there should be more of an onus on his team to also solve issues.

"Ferrari has control of the engine, but that's something we have to decide on, how we are going to go forward," said Haas.

"It's our car, and Ferrari has a lot of responsibility to providing the technical assistance.

"But there's no reason why we can't take some of those responsibilities on ourselves, and make sure the car we put out there actually works.

"If we have a bad day, I can't sit there and say, 'that's Ferrari's fault'. We've got to take responsibility for how we perform on the track.

"We're going to figure this out, and if we have technical problems, how do we solve those problems?

"That's what makes us different to another team. If we stumble, and we are going to stumble, to get up and try again."