Steiner hails Fittipaldi's testing feedback

Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner told media officials on Wednesday how the feedback that the team is receiving from its test driver Pietro Fittipaldi is very good and very positive for the team.

Fittipaldi will work with Haas throughout 2019 as its official test driver role for 2019. The 22-year-old, a grandson of famous 1972 and 1974 F1 world champion Emerson, first tested for Haas in Abu Dhabi last November.

He has also competed in the World Endurance Championship and the Japanese Super Formula Series, as well as becoming the 2011-12 NASCAR Whelen All-American Series champion. Steiner is very positive of the feedback from Fittipaldi in comparison to race drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen.

"It's very good, he was in all the debriefs, he knows what he is doing," Steiner told GPToday.net in Barcelona. "For his age he has driven a lot of different cars, and it makes a difference on a driver as well. He's not grown up in just one, he's gone left, right and centre driving race cars.

"He's driven oval, dirt tracks, everything so he's got a good understanding. He knows what engineers want to know. He did already a bit of simulator testing for us so he knows what we are looking for and he drove the car already in Abu Dhabi so he is very well prepared for his age."

Fittipaldi substituted for Magnussen in the final ninety minutes of Tuesday's session after the Dane suffered a problem with his headrest, and was also driving in Wednesday's morning's test. However, not all was perfect for the American team, as both Fittipaldi and Grosjean stopped on track with problems.

"(Today) saw us with a few too many stops out on the track,” Steiner commented.“We need to get rid of these failures. We got a good amount of mileage in at the end of the day though. We keep on learning, but we want to fast-track the process to get us ready for the Australian Grand Prix.”