Haas 'are not sitting on fence' over upgrade - Steiner

Haas Team Principal Guenther Steiner is relieved that the team has not decided to "sit on the fence" and delay bringing its sizeable United States Grand Prix upgrade.

After a difficult season in which the VF-23 has been plagued by a tendency to be too hard on its tyres in races which has limited opportunities for Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg to score points, despite strong one-lap pace in qualifying.

The team has not brought any big upgrades to the car, instead preferring to put all its energy into one big package, available for the home race in Austin this weekend.

While Steiner does not know what the package will bring, he has praised the team for actually doing something and not holding off introducing it when ready to avoid any "bad surprises" with the 2024 car.

"I wouldn't call it a new car, it is a big upgrade, but it is not like a new car," Steiner explained to media including RacingNews365 in Austin.

"It's not like you have to learn everything, but I am pretty calm because I don't know what to expect, but it will be a bit busy [in practice] but it is not a new car launch and hopefully it works better than the other one.

"But the main thing for me is to see what we did, that we can do something and not just waiting, doing nothing.

"I hear people saying: 'Oh, why did you do it in Austin? It's a strange place' but if you do it in Mexico, you've got the altitude and in Brazil as well, so sometimes you just have to do something rather than sitting on the fence all the time and always find a reason not to do something.

"Whatever the performance is, we will try to get out of it as much as possible in one hour of practice and for sure over the next five races, learn something for next year, which can be useful by developing the 2024 car aerodynamics.

"We will just leave the old [concept] behind and move on, but instead of waiting until February and then maybe getting a bad surprise, we tried to do it now because there is not a lot we can lose at the moment."

Steiner also touched on the morale of the team with the upgrades, in what has been a challenging season for the team - which currently sits ninth in the Constructors' on 12 points having been overtaken by Alfa Romeo in Qatar.

"The people [in the team] love [the uprade], the racers love it," Steiner said.

"When you've got a problem, you do something about it, what the outcome is, you don't know, but you know something.

"Obviously we are not doing it completely blind, and the team for sure is pumped up.

"They are really happy to do something new. A good race team always wants to move forward."