Haas progress not squandered by Schumacher crash - Steiner

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner is impressed with the progress made by his rookie drivers at Monaco despite Mick Schumacher's session ending early with a crash.

The German slid into the barriers at Massenet in the closing stages of second practice, damaging the right rear of the car and bringing out the red flags to end the session.

"He was getting into the groove, he had quite a bit of traffic, but otherwise, he was doing what he is always doing," said Steiner.

"I think he just got a little bit close to Checo [Perez] and lost a bit of downforce and then just the car got loose in the rear and hit the barrier."

"I think the damage is the rear-right suspension but nothing too bad it looks like. I hope nothing went into the gearbox but normally, looking at it just on TV, it looks like just the suspension."

On the overall efforts for the team, he added: "I think there’s more to come. I can wait for that. I would rather have the day we had with the times we have and make the progress we have made.

"Most of the guys have done 50 laps so I’m actually... even with Mick hitting the rear end of the car, I am still pretty happy because it happened at the end of the session.

"Obviously, if it wouldn’t have happened I would have been even happier but all in all we can say it was a good decent day."

For the first time this season both Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin were able to extract similar pace from the VF21, with the Russian driver outperforming his team-mate around the streets of the Principality.

Having challenged Williams in qualifying at the last two races in Portugal and Spain morale has been boosted but Steiner insists there is more to give yet.

On the objectives for the rest of the weekend, Steiner stated: "Keep out of the walls, which we didn’t actually achieve [on Thursday].

"We hit them, but not too bad. So still, even with what happened, we didn’t lose a lot of laps and that’s the most important thing for me here.

"It’s the same every weekend. I am positive we can get quicker, I don’t know how much quicker but we are not maxed out yet. If we can keep it at the level we are now I am very happy."

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