JV had experience too and we saw what he did at BAR , nothing . It is obvious they are not in sync, I don’t believe Steiner is a deadbeat so it has to come down to the drivers feedback and bad management decisions , they are going backwards
Jacques Villeneuve's title flattered to deceive: he won on a William that had been developed the previous year by Damon Hill, a reputed test driver. At BAR, he was in a new team and had to develop a new car. Him and the team never achieved that over the years. Villeneuve's career was ruined by that move Haas cars are designed and built by Dalarra, using as many Ferrari parts as allowed (suspension, brakes, engine and gearbox). I don't know who's in charge of development; is it done in-house at the team facilities (US/England) , or by Dalarra in Italy? At times, the team has admitted suffering delays to get new parts; I guess Dalarra manufactures them. So, it could simply be an organisation problem, and Haas doesn't run on a huge budget.
The issue with BAR was JV , he sucked , is not a development driver and it showed as the team went nowhere. HAAS is at the same place in some ways , the cane out of the gate looking pretty respectful and from there on , starting going backwards . The good old saying , if it isn’t broken no need to fix it , in their case , it is broken and looking for the outside , all we can do is speculate but in my opinion , they need better drivers , at least one that knows how to win , RG is hardly that and neither is Magnussen . Let’s see how this season goes , not holding my breath
I agree about Jacques Villeneuve. Regarding Haas, I don't know who is in charge of development; is it Haas or Dalarra? Drivers don't develop a car, they can only give feedback. The development is the job of engineers and technicians aided by telemetry and the data collected. As long as they don't have a better car, Haas won't attract better drivers. After the honeymoon period, I think that Gene Haas is finding F1 harder than he thought.
I thought that Haas had stated that they design the car, and Dallara builds it. While it's easy to pile on Haas, it was just last year that they went backwards thanks to the car and Grosjean, so I still give them the benefit of the doubt for a young team. Holy crap, they're way ahead of the last 3 new teams that are all gone and managed I think 1 point ever. The rules let them design/build/buy parts so they have used those rules, that's a positive thing not a negative. If you want a team building all their own stuff on little budget, well, Williams was even worse last year!
