The American-owned outfit completed backside of the constructors’ championship in 2023 after Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg discovered themselves struggling for tempo in races due to tyre points.
Properly conscious of how a lot the issue held it again, Haas headed into F1’s pre-season take a look at in Bahrain final week with a whole concentrate on race-distance runs to attempt to unravel what was going mistaken.
Having felt inspired by the solutions it bought from its new VF-24, Haas boss Ayao Komatsu feels that Magnussen and Hulkenberg can get pleasure from a lot better consistency within the season forward.
“Final 12 months’s automotive was inconsistent, it was fairly nasty,” stated Komatsu. “Relying on the circumstances – tyre situation, wind situation or monitor temperature – the automotive actually wasn’t behaving in a predictable method.
“Whereas this 12 months’s automotive is behaving in a predictable method. It’s constant. Sure, we’re nonetheless missing downforce, particularly in high-speed and kind of balancing medium/low-speed traits, however I do not suppose it is bought nasty traits.”
Komatsu believes that its efforts have paid off in serving to ship what he considers an “acceptable” baseline to begin to the season with, previous to upgrades arriving in some unspecified time in the future within the early section of the marketing campaign.
And the mindset of drilling down in organising the automotive for race tempo, quite than grid slot, is one thing that Komatsu says will likely be maintained for the remainder of the season.
Kevin Magnussen, Haas VF-24
Picture by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Photographs
“You’ve got to resolve what the most important drawback is you need to clear up,” he stated. “There is no such thing as a level qualifying in P7 and going backwards on Sunday. I might quite qualify P14 however have a automotive we are able to race and rise up to the highest 10. That is our goal.
“I am not going to instantly flip up subsequent weekend right here after which begin optimizing a automotive for qualifying, no.”
Whereas this method means Haas could not have as many pleasing Saturdays in 2024, he thinks that finally it is going to ship a greater platform for the workforce.
“Everyone is aware of our drawback and the way irritating that’s, proper?” he stated. “Take a look at Abu Dhabi, final race of the season, primarily with the launch automotive. We will qualify P8, which is implausible, however all of us knew, Saturday evening, we won’t do something on Sunday.
“We lived by means of that final 12 months. In that sense, it isn’t tough to persuade everybody.
“However on the identical time, in fact, everybody needs to learn how fast is our automotive on one-lap tempo. However the message needed to be clear.
“If there’s one factor we would have liked to return out from this take a look at, it was studying about tyre administration, and our long-run tempo. So as soon as you bought the target, that is what we’re doing. The whole lot else is noise.”
