F1
Nate Saunders, General Editor, F1 8y

Haas may wait until Monaco for Ferrari upgrade

Haas is not running the upgraded Ferrari engine in Russia and may not do so until the Monaco Grand Prix, according to team boss Guenther Steiner.

Ferrari has spent three engine tokens ahead of this weekend's race in the hope of unlocking more power down Sochi's long straights. The 2016 regulations state the most recent spec of engine must always be available to a manufacturer's customers.

However, a new upgrade means moving on to a new engine and each driver has an allocation of five a season before incurring grid penalties.After FP2 in Russia Steiner confirmed Haas is running the same engines from the first three races at the Sochi Autodrom this weekend and had not planned its first change this early in the campaign.

Asked if the team had the new upgrade, Steiner said: "No, I haven't really spoken to them yet but I think we get it when we change our engine for the first time, that's when it normally comes in. We still are using the engine from the first three races so we are not having it here, no."

Spain and Monaco are circuits less dependent on power but Steiner expects the team will switch to the new power unit at one of those two events, with the latter taking place on May 29.

"We don't know yet. It's either Spain or Monte Carlo, we don't know exactly yet when we get it in."

Of the three teams supplied by Ferrari, only Haas and Sauber will have access to the new spec of power unit. Last year Toro Rosso was given permission to run a 2015 Ferrari engine during this campaign, meaning it will be unable to upgrade its power unit throughout the season.

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