Haas team pri🧸ncipal Guenther Steiner believes there is no clear leader in the fight to lead Formula 1’s midfield in 2019, saying the pace-setter is likely to change from race to race.

Haas ran towards the head of the midfield in Australia and Bahrain qu♎alifying, only to suffer a downturn in performance in the ra🌊ce in Bahrain as drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen struggled to manage their tyres.

McLaren’s Carlos Sainz said in Bahrain that he thought Haas held a꧑ 0.5-second advantage over its midfield rivals, but Steiner♛ sees the race to lead the midfield as being far more fluid.

“I wouldn’t say the midfield is closer🌌 than last year, there’s just more people in it. I think everybody can be in it at some stage,” Steiner said.

“I think this year, at different tracks, the leading midfield team could be different from track to track. It’s not one team leading the midfi🎐eld, it looks to me like.

“But our posi🔯tion now, I’m obviously not very happy. We should have more points. It’s still very tight, so nobody got away.

“I think it could be a ve🍎ry interesting midfield, even more interesting than last year.”

Haas sits just two points shy of early midfield leader Alfa Romeo in the constructors’ champion༺ship despite failing to score any points in Bahrain, with the team working through the post-race t🦩est to understand its tyre issues.

“We were lucky to have a test afterwards and it looks🌞 like that we didn’t manage the tꦆyres in a good way,” Steiner said.

“I hope we found the cause and we don’t repeat it, that’s the ai🍸m. The car, we just lost the perf🦋ormance. The tyres didn’t work any more after a few laps, and then we lost our pace over the race.

“I think everyone else got it right in Bahrain. We were just out 🔯of the window. That can happen and it will happen to other ones as well.”

RASPBERRY FUEL?

Following a throwaway comment from Red Bull F1 team boss Christian Horner that Ferrari’s fuel smelled like grapefruit in Bahrain, S🌌teiner was🐼 asked if Haas - which races with Ferrari engines - also had found the same thing.

“At the beginni💯ng of the season we had a meeꦍting with Ferrari and they asked us which flavour we wanted,” Steiner joked.

“Our guys like raspberries, so we had raspberඣry flavour!

“No, I’ve never heard of fuel smelling like grapefru🅘it, I’ve never smelt their fuel. I wouldn’t have noticed that we’ve got grapefruit smell in our garage, so I don’t know.”

Steiner added that Haa💟s was not using “exactly the same” fuel as F🃏errari.

Additional reporting by Michael Lamonato.