Steiner: 'Hardline' driver approach might change for 2025

Haas Team Principal Guenter Steiner believes the team's current"hardline" approach to having an experienced driver lineup overrookies might change for 2025. The team elected to go with theexperienced lineup of Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg for 2023,after it was revealed that Mick Schumacher had cost the teammillions of dollars in crash damage throughout the 2022 season.Both Magnussen and Hulkenberg were retained on one-year deals for2024, as the team wanted to have the experience to complement itsambitions to get further up the grid. It ran an all-rookie lineupduring the 2021 season with Nikita Mazepin and Schumacher, althoughSteiner has opened up the possibility of changing their currentposition for 2025 given the state of the current driver market. "Ithink it was a hardline position at some stage," Steiner toldmedia, including RacingNews365 . "In 2025 it opens up. At somestage we will have new drivers coming into F1 because some aregetting on in their career. "It's too early to make decisions, butI think next year a lot of people will start moving early in theseason to make sure that in 2025 they are in a good place." Moretime to test rookies? Haas recently tested F2 star and FerrariDriver Academy prospect Oliver Bearman, having also ran him as partof their FP1 allocation for rookie drivers. When asked if thereneeds to be more time to prepare rookie drivers, Steiner does notthink there needs to be more testing with current-spec cars.“Obviously you can say, no, but then again, we don’t want testingbecause then we go out and test the cars and spend money, money,money," said Steiner. “Now, what a lot of these drivers are doing,they’re running with the older cars. These older cars, they’restill pretty fast cars. I think they can make experience that wayif a manufacturer pushes a young driver. “So they’ve got theopportunity there and then you have got FP1s, but obviously, wouldthe drivers like to have more possibility to learn about F1? Sure.“It is what it is and I think with the compromise that they can runtwo-year-old cars, I think we are fine.”