Haas's 2023 challenger showed flashes of pace in qualifying, particularly in the hands of the returning Nico Hulkenberg.
But problems with the VF-23's excessive tyre overheating, especially on more demanding circuits and in warmer conditions, have prevented the team from converting its one-lap pace into decent results over a race distance.
Hulkenberg and team-mate Kevin Magnussen have each only managed to score points on two occasions, leaving Haas a joint seventh in the standings heading into the second half of the season.
Haas's disastrous Belgian Grand Prix, the last race before the summer shutdown in which Magnussen and Hulkenberg finished a distant 15th and 18th respectively, indicated that a solution still hasn't been found.
In an exclusive interview with Autosport, team boss Steiner admitted that Haas' season so far has been "difficult to digest".
"Obviously, we started off pretty good but then didn't get a hold of our problems right away, which is the tyre overheating," Steiner said when asked to evaluate his team's season so far.
"And now we're a little bit on the back foot. We can do very good qualifyings and very bad races, we can do both of them. For the whole team it's a rollercoaster to have these highs on a Saturday and these lows on a Sunday. It's difficult to digest.
"We're working very hard on it and hopefully we've got something after the break. But it's not easy and until you try it on the car, you don't know.
"You can do a lot of simulations, calculations, whatever. But you need to put the stuff on the car, because it's still a very weird problem we have got compared to everybody else. But you cannot give up."
Source: Autosport