Haas has presented its new car for the 2020 F1 season at the Circuit de Catalunya.
[smr2020test]Team owner Gene Haas was present at the car’s launch along with team principal Guenther Steiner and drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevon Magnussen.
The car had its first shakedown run at the Spanish circuit earlier this week. Pre-season testing will begin at the track later today.
The team is eager to rebound from a poor campaign last year, when it fell four places to ninth in the championship. “Obviously, after a season like 2019, it’s good to get going again with a fresh start,” said team principal Guenther Steiner.
“We realised last year, in the middle of the season, that we needed to do something different for 2020, and we did. We’ve just tried to apply into the new car some of the things we learned at the end of the season when we had development parts on the car.”
The team made a strong start to pre-season testing before its form slumped dramatically. Steiner said they have made changes to reduce the chance of that happening again.
“Last year we had a good test, and the early races were good – then it went south. What we’ve learned is how to look at things better, and how to analyse our data better to see if we’re on the right track or if we’re headed in the wrong direction. We learned as well to listen to our drivers, that sometimes helps a lot.”
Pictures: 2020 Haas F1 car
[f1tv2020testc]
2020 F1 season
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Sham (@sham)
19th February 2020, 7:12
Quite an achievement. It must take hours to remove the Ferrari logos from the drawings and moulds.
Ross
19th February 2020, 7:17
Haven’t seen a Ferrari with side pod sculpting like that. They operate within the frameworks set out by F1 to create a car on a limited budget. They’ll never reach championship contention with this way of operating, but they should be able to play in the mid field.
DAllein (@)
19th February 2020, 7:15
Mmmmm…. like in “meh”.
Though I don’t wish them bad luck of course!
Hope this time the car works at least predictably.
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
19th February 2020, 7:29
I see they’ve got what I believe was called a “coat hanger” and I guess you’d call it a “modified shark fin”. I’m looking forward to seeing what the laptimes are.