Steiner on Haas's poor F1 form: "Racing like this kills you"

The team has had difficulty getting its car into the right tyre operating window for much of the season, and has not scored points for the past three grands prix.

That poor run of form, and being unable so far to overcome the tyre issues so Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean can make progress in the races, is something Steiner is finding increasingly hard to take.

"At the moment this is our struggle," he said.

"We will try to get solutions to it as soon as possible. I think we understand it, but I don't know if we can get solutions this year.

"But racing like this, it kills you.

"Everyone knows how I like to race, and this is something [else]."

Steiner said it was especially frustrating that even when the car is quick in qualifying, or in the early stages of races, its pace can suddenly fall away.

"You go out with new tyres, the tyres work for two laps then the temperatures go down and you are done again," he said.

"We are always so on the edge with everything that a little thing happens and we are gone.

"The drop off is not a tenth or two, it is drop off that can mean a second.

"We are so on the edge that I don't know where we are. Just track temperature can make a difference for us, being in or out. We are there or thereabouts or we are out."

He also admitted that the recent trials with its Melbourne-spec car have highlighted that Haas's issues go beyond tyre problems.

"For two or three races we've known pretty well where we are," Steiner said.

"Changing over to the Melbourne spec helped a lot to understand it and get the reality of where we are. That is why it was done.

"The Melbourne spec is as good as this [current] one. We know what that means: we didn't make any progress, everybody else did.

"In the first year with the new regulations you have to make progress and we didn't. That is where we are.

"That is why the car was good for testing and Melbourne and then we stood still."