Haas suffered power failure during Silverstone race
Haas team principal Gunther Steiner has revealed his team suffered a total power failure in its garage for about 10 laps during the British Grand Prix, something he admits caused 'panic' among the engineers.
“We had a problem with our electricity – everything went down, we had no data, nothing available to the engineers because everything went down,” Steiner said after the race.
“You cannot concentrate on the car anymore but you try to fix to get your telemetry back. We lost a bit of time there because Esteban [Gutierrez] then came in a lap late for going to dry [tyres], because it was [during] that period.
“We couldn’t speak properly because we had no GPS, we lost radio then we had transmission failure with Romain [Grosjean]."
Grosjean retired on lap 17 after having made his second stop, at the time when Gutierrez came for dry rubber for his last stint.
When asked the extent of the failure and how the team coped with it, Steiner admitted that the engineers went into ‘panic’ mode, but the electricians fixed the issue to get back online.
“It was loss of power with the system, it just went down, we found out what exactly happened and then we were switched on again,” the Austrian continued.
“I think we were about 6-10 laps without electricity, engineers start to panic when they have no telemetry.
“When it’s like [the situation in the middle of the race], we still need to go racing, we cannot stop the car [at that moment] until we get telemetry!"
Stiener added that the blackout took place after Grosjean’s retirement, and that neither of its drivers knew of the issue.
"No, the drivers weren’t aware of the situation," he said. "They were aware that we didn’t know about where the car was because GPS went down."
Summing up the race, Steiner concluded: "All together we end up 16th [with Gutierrez] and one car not finishing. Mistakes we knew that would happen, it’s never nice when they happen.
"But you learn out of mistakes, you can do a lot by experience but some things you need to learn [and] you get better.
"In the end it was tough race for a lot of people today, so we will go get ready for Hungary and try to do better there."
Additional reporting by Jamie Klein
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