Haas team principal Guenther Steiner believes that keeping Mick Schumacher behind Kevin Magnussen in the Sprint was “the right thing to do.”
Magnussen and Schumacher ended the Sprint at the Red Bull Ring 7th and 9th respectively. The latter wanted to swap positions with his teammate during the race, but Haas declined Schumacher’s request.
Schumacher was overtaken by Lewis Hamilton in the closing stages of the race. The German was frustrated with the outcome of the race as he felt that he had been capable of competing for P6. However, Steiner was confident that Haas made a right decision.
“We know exactly where we were and to get points for the team, we had to do what we did, and it was the right thing to do,” he said.
“[Swapping] wouldn’t have worked, because he [Schumacher] wasn’t faster. Obviously you are faster because you are in DRS. We spoke about this before the race. I explained to them, if you can come out after the start behind each other, the second one thinks he is faster because you are nine tenths of a second faster because of the DRS effect.
“But that doesn’t make you faster, because as soon as you go in front, the other guy is nine tenths faster! As soon as you let somebody by, Lewis is so close and will sneak by as well and then get us afterwards.
“We monitored everything and I think we did completely the right thing, because otherwise we would have gone out of the points with both cars, or maximum maybe achieved one point.”
