Haas team principal Guenther Steiner believes Esteban Gutierrez is better at adapting to a less-than-perfect car than team-mate Romain Grosjean.

The Frenchman is coming off a torrid Singapore event where his progress was plagued by a litany of woes, which culminated with brake-by-wire problems that prevented him from making the start. Grosjean went as far as labelling his car the worst he had ever driven at some point during the weekend.

It’s not the first time that the former Lotus driver has complained about the behaviour of his VF-16, though he has scored all of Haas’ 28 points so far this year.

“Romain normally gets in the car and it’s what he wants, or it’s a disaster,” Steiner said ahead of this weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix. “It’s very little in-between normally so I don’t know where it comes from and we have to find out.

“I think also maybe Esteban can deal with a not-the-perfect-car better than Romain, so I don’t know, but Romain, when the car is good, he’s doing very good things.”

When it was pointed to him that both drivers use the same setups, the Haas team boss added: “Oh yeah absolutely... and I want to emphasise this one; it’s a policy that if we have got only one front wing, we are not bringing it to the race because then again you just fight who gets it. Then you just get confused.

“We need to have at least two then every driver has got the same equal chance to do the same thing. There’s always the same materials for both of them. From day one we always stuck to that principle.”

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