Haas is planning to change the concept of its car at the United States Grand Prix next month as it looks to turnaround its frustrating race pace form.
Qualifying has often seen Haas enjoying competitive sessions in the midfield, with Nico Hulkenberg making multiple Q3 appearances this season. But the team has not scored a point since Kevin Magnussen’s 10th place in Miami, and team principal Guenther Steiner says the decision has been made to follow the now widely adopted Red Bull design direction, which will result in the car changing “quite a bit,”
“The concept of the car will change, going in that direction,” Steiner said. “You know you’re limited with the chassis and a few other things, but we’re trying to go to that common downwash shape like everybody else has got.
“The radiators and stuff like this, we cannot change them now — just haven’t got time. Your chassis you can change, but it wouldn’t work out. I don’t think it’s down to Ferrari — their electronic boxes are there, but I wouldn’t blame Ferrari for that one.
“Some of the stuff obviously we need to go close to them (Red Bull) — we could have put it somewhere else if we wanted, but we put it very similar. That concept we are running now asked for the side impact structure to be where it is. I think we got out whatever we could to go to a downwash options — we cannot push it any further.”
Steiner says the decision to make the change was made in July, and driven by the fact the team was struggling to find other gains with its existing car.
“That was our biggest problem with the concept we have now: we couldn’t find any more performance. We developed the whole year and there was nothing there anymore and at some stage you need to decide, ‘We need to do something different here, we cannot keep banging our head against the wall.’
“McLaren changed the system like this and they found something. At some stage you need to say, ‘Hey, we need to change concept, we need to face reality.’”
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The new car won’t be ready until the USGP at Austin’s Circuit of The Americas in October, but Steiner says that the information Haas will get can still then inform next year’s design.
“We’ll always be careful and we cannot be sure as our development time was not long, but you have to take risks,” he said. “Looking to ’24, that is worthwhile to take a risk, and say, ‘Hey, we should have kept it in the wind tunnel to develop it’ (but) let’s do it, find out what it gives, and then at least next year we’re in a better place.”