Haas will bring the final upgrade for its VF-17 car to this weekend’s United States Grand Prix.
The US-based team has readied new aerodynamic tweaks as it bids to hold off the threat from Renault, which lies one point behind in the constructors’ championship.
“It’s the last upgrade for our car this year,” team principal Guenther Steiner explained. “The modifications are on the bargeboard sides and on the floor of the car. It’s easily recognizable when you see the car what has changed.”
Haas scored a double points finish at Suzuka which moved back ahead of Renault in the standings. The team is nine points behind Toro Rosso and 23 points behind fifth-placed Williams with four races remaining.
Steiner believes other teams had mistakenly written off Haas’s chances over the final rounds. “As I always say, to make predictions this year, in the midfield, is impossible,” he said. “Nobody can predict it.”
“People wrote us off after Malaysia. They said we’d scored the last of our points this year. Then we came back in Japan with two cars in the points.”
“Anything can happen. It doesn’t depend only on how we are doing, but how good the other teams are. That’s obvious, but by being so tight, anything can happen. Last year we scored a point at COTA and we’ll try to do better this year.”
He credited the teams strong performance in Japan to how well its car has performed on similar tracks.
“Our car, last year and this year, is very good on technical circuits with high-speed corners,” said Steiner. “Maybe there’s a little bit of luck, as well.”
“I would say Suzuka is one of the most, if not the most technical track on the calendar. A lot of the car needs to be good, and the drivers need to perform at a high level. It came together twice in the two years we’ve been there.”
Shimks (@shimks)
16th October 2017, 13:04
For a brand new team entering the sport, Haas have done amazingly well. Their results may seem disappointing following their strong first season, but I still say that no-one could have predicted how well they have done over the last two seasons.
Haas has shown how you can enter F1 and survive the first two seasons. Now my question is, should there be at some point an increase to the restrictions on parts such teams can enjoy from their partnerships with more established teams? In other words, does the FIA at some point put a stop to the hand-holding?
pastaman (@)
16th October 2017, 14:51
In this instance I don’t think the FIA will need to step in. I believe it’s written into the contract between Haas and Ferrari itself that they will only be supplied those parts for so long. I can’t remember off the top of my head when that is, it may be as soon as next year. It will be interesting to see if Sauber goes as far as Haas did.
With an aim to keep team budgets down in the future, I can’t imagine they will be cracking down too hard on shared parts until they come out with their own official list of “standard” parts.
Kevin
16th October 2017, 19:12
I think a lot of what Haas has that benefits them other than the parts from Ferrari, is that Gene Haas owns the company that creates the Haas CNC and I’ve seen videos on Youtube from Mercedes in their “Monza to Singapore” series where they have Haas CNCs in their factory. Certainly if you create these CNCs you should be able to create any tools or parts you may need to make the job better. They were obviously behind on research when they joined F1, but if they can pick up R&D I think they can be like a factory team without the factory parts because they have resources to do so much in house.
Nunu
16th October 2017, 17:05
Im afraid Sauber will take the lead very soon next year…Ferrari will never give the best parts to Haas when they have their own young driver team in Sauber! Best thing Haas could do is prepearing for a Honda motor in 2019…and hope for the best!!!!
Dave
17th October 2017, 0:33
The Haas wing attached to their shark fin seems more prone to wild oscillations than those on the other teams. I wonder that that wasn’t on the ‘fix’ list, it couldn’t be helping…
Illusive (@illusive)
17th October 2017, 17:25
I remember many predicting that haas might be ahead of many established midfield teams, didn’t turn out to be true.
Still they have been more competitive than saber.
Hopefully saber too pick up some parts from ferrari so that there aren’t any backmarkers anymore.
Todd (@braketurnaccelerate)
18th October 2017, 8:48
Without knowing the inner workings of the HAAS team and their contract with Ferrari, it almost seems like the help and guidance they are actually getting from Scuderia is actually very limited. I remember one article (it may have been a blog post or something like that as well) last year which actually pointed out that HAAS had installed some of the control arms upside down. I seems like Ferrari sold them the parts and simply dropped the crate of parts off, and yelled “Have Fun!” as they hopped back in the truck and sped away.
While it’s certainly a leg up to have Ferrari supply numerous parts, it can sometimes be an even bigger headache trying to optimize someone else’s designs, instead of optimizing perhaps a simpler design that you created and understand all the nuances. I think the first year that HAAS goes cold-turkey off of Ferrari parts, there will be a huge wake-up call for the organization. But I think they’ll be better for it, and in succeeding years we will see a more refined product than other backmarkers.