Steiner: We have to be careful about getting overenthusiastic

The American outfit have had two decent weekends in a row in Silverstone and Spielberg, as both drivers, Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher, scored points for the team.

Previewing the French Grand Prix at the Circuit Paul Ricard this weekend, Haas team boss Guenther Steiner is wary of getting too excited after two points-scoring races in a row, and tried to manage the expectations.

"I'm very happy about it but I'm very happy about it for the team because I've told them that they need to believe in themselves because we've done it before and we will do it again, and we have so it's a very good result," Steiner said of the previous two races.

"I think we have to be careful about getting too overenthusiastic for the next races, so we're not thinking that this will keep continuing easily – this is very hard work from a lot of people," he added. "We will do the best we can and hopefully we can get some more points and have quite a relaxed summer break."

Haas are yet to update their 2022 Formula 1 car, the VF22, but Steiner feels that car has been a decent performer over the variety of circuits it has been at this season.

"Our car is pretty good everywhere," he said. "I think our weakest point is high-speed tracks like those in Jeddah and Baku and coming up in Spa and Monza.

"I'm very confident that if we execute well, we can have points again. I don't know how many but the reliability in the last two races was good and hopefully it will stay good for the next events before the summer," Steiner concluded.

Kevin Magnussen hasn't driven an F1 car around Paul Ricard since 2018, and will be looking to get reacquainted with the French Circuit this weekend.

The Dane pointed out in his team preview: "It's been a while now since I've raced a Formula 1 car around there so in FP1 I'm going to find my rhythm again and on this track with all the run off there's no real risk from going straight out and pushing, so I'll be doing that.

"France is a pretty unique circuit because it's very flat," he added. "It's quite wide in places and you have a lot of run off.

"It feels different driving there compared to other tracks. We had a good result back in 2018 and it's always nice going back to places where you've had good experiences in the past, so I'm hoping for more good results," Magnussen said.

Mick Schumacher heads two France having scored his first F1 career points at Silverstone, following that up by an impressive weekend in Austria where he scored points as well.

Last year at Le Castellet, Schumacher made it into Q2 for the first time, one year on he said: "Obviously I feel more experienced, I feel a bit more complete but there's still a long way to go.

"It's only my second year, there's so much more to learn in Formula 1 besides racing and every day I try to exploit that to see where I can improve and where I still feel like I need work.

"For sure it's a track where usually you have the opportunity to push quite hard just because you know that you can go over a certain limit sometimes," he added on Paul Ricard.

"It's one of those tracks where you can push harder than other tracks just because you know you have the run off and the chances of you getting near a wall is quite slim.

"Obviously, if you do a mistake, it's quite bad for the tires so you obviously don't want to do it in an important session, but definitely it's a track that is quite interesting.

"It can be confusing at times due to all the different lines, so it's not just viewers that get confused, it can also be the drivers too," Schumacher explained.