2023 Haas F1 Team

[Wouter]

Nico Hulkenberg Celebrates His 200th Grand Prix! | 2023 Mexico City Grand Prix

October 29. From a fresh-faced rookie with Williams in 2010, to a regular points scrapper with Force India, Sauber, and Renault,
super-sub for Racing Point and Aston Martin, and Haas veteran in the present day, Nico Hulkenberg has been on a wild ride in F1!
We take a trip down memory lane, with gifts from all his teams to celebrate the occasion. Happy 200th Nico!

[continuum16]

I think Haas are getting close to their performance ceiling as a car/team model. If you consider the change in competitive spread across the field since 2017/2018 and the gap from Haas to Ferrari across each season, it kind of makes sense:

In the team's best years, 2017 and 2018 in my opinion, they were still 1-1.5s off of the factory team. However, Ferrari was often fastest or second-fastest on any given weekend. More importantly, the gap from, say, first to last in Q1 at most races was in the 2.5-3s region, and it was not uncommon to see only 5-7 cars on the lead lap of the race. Nowadays, Ferrari is not as fast relative to the field as they were, and the gap from first to last in Q1 is often around 1-1.3s. Also, there are typically at least 10 cars on the lead lap at most races where there isn't a significant safety car interruption.

I would argue that they are closer to Ferrari now than they ever have been in terms of pure pace. On most weekends, they are within a second of Ferrari in qualifying and are 1-1.5s second per lap off in race pace. While they have closed the gap relative to their partner team, the rest of the field has closed in at a notably faster rate.

They are likely not going to be faster than Ferrari ever, unless Ferrari completely bungles a niche aero concept, under their current arrangement. Being within half a second consistently seems like it would be about the maximum (they're not there now), which given how closed up the field is, might still only be enough for the occasional points.

[Xyz22]

According to Duchessa Haas will compare the upgraded spec introduced in Austin with the old one. Hulkenberg seems to prefer the previous version.

Not looking good.

[organic]

Yes the race have put out an article about it as well

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/haas ... ulkenberg/

[Xyz22]

Yes the race have put out an article about it as well

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/haas ... ulkenberg/

This probably highlights the poor quality of Ferrari components that Haas is buying.

[Vanja #66]

Hulk was the better driver this season, but now with old spec he was 4 tenths slower in Q than K-Mag. New spec is an improvement.

[organic]

Hulk was the better driver this season, but now with old spec he was 4 tenths slower in Q than K-Mag. New spec is an improvement.

Vegas is a bit unusual in many ways with its minimal cooling requirement and emphasis on tyre warmup.. I would say that 1 good performance at a bit of an outlier circuit in the past 4 with the new package is not enough to conclude anything

[AR3-GP]

Hulk was the better driver this season, but now with old spec he was 4 tenths slower in Q than K-Mag. New spec is an improvement.

They said the old car has more downforce but Hulk was quicker on the straights while Mag was quicker in the corners. Odd.

[search]

After qualifying, Hülkenberg said that it's too early to say which package is the better one. He feels good with the one he has and sees no disadvantages in the numbers, but they'll only know when having a closer look into it after Abu Dhabi.

He expects next week's track to suit the old car even better. According to him, today he only missed out on Q3 due to a mistake under braking.

[Vanja #66]

They said the old car has more downforce but Hulk was quicker on the straights while Mag was quicker in the corners. Odd.

As Ferrari learned (again) the hard way (again) it's not about maximum downforce, it's about useable downforce

[organic]

Replied in the Haas team thread

Article about the sf23's development

Talks about how switching away from bathtubs lost downforce but eventually opened up development paths (previously speculated)

The Austria floor was optimization based on the sidepod changes and front wing to improve overall balance

Suzuka floor change aimed to improve consistency of downforce. This meant better balance and drivers can experience similar characteristics corner to corner.

https://formu1a.uno/ferrari-le-nuove-pa ... ni-future/

Ah this is why Hulk doesn't want the new package.

Perhaps.. but the Haas is not the sf23: Ferrari abandoned the bathtubs and 6 weeks later had a downwash concept while Haas with 1.5x the wind tunnel time waited 6 months before manufacturing their new car. It can be assumed from the lead time that they, unlike Ferrari, waited to see significant gains in the tunnel before committing to the new direction.

That the downwash concept switch initially cost Ferrari load in the tunnel does however go some way to explain why Haas waited so long in the season to fit the extensive upgrade.. you factor in 1-2 GP of teething issues with a fully upgraded car and they left themselves 2-3 races to make the most of it. From this I'd assume it took a while before they found gains that made up for the loss in load & then enough performance to make a costly upgrade package worthwhile

From Guenther's comments at COTA they expected to gain a lot of laptime from the upgrade, particularly in race trim. What they seemed to have done instead is produce a car that just has different characteristics but not necessarily faster on average, with the new car suiting kmag more and hulk less

There's another, more conspiratorial option. Guenther's "we expected more" comments were publicly to save face that Haas never found the gains they expected, and that the COTA upgrade package was delayed for so long because they never found the expected gains. And in the end they brought it as late as they could but with enough grand Prix left in the season that they may discover/learn things about the car/setup/aero that will inform them of the right development direction. Given how much Haas take their design cues and inspiration from Ferrari it's possible that without Ferrari doing much to their car, Haas had less of an idea than normal. Last year all Haas did for Hungary was adapt their base car more towards the F1-75 for instance.

[Xyz22]

Replied in the Haas team thread

Article about the sf23's development

Talks about how switching away from bathtubs lost downforce but eventually opened up development paths (previously speculated)

The Austria floor was optimization based on the sidepod changes and front wing to improve overall balance

Suzuka floor change aimed to improve consistency of downforce. This meant better balance and drivers can experience similar characteristics corner to corner.

https://formu1a.uno/ferrari-le-nuove-pa ... ni-future/

Ah this is why Hulk doesn't want the new package.

Perhaps.. but the Haas is not the sf23: Ferrari abandoned the bathtubs and 6 weeks later had a downwash concept while Haas with 1.5x the wind tunnel time waited 6 months before manufacturing their new car. It can be assumed from the lead time that they, unlike Ferrari, waited to see significant gains in the tunnel before committing to the new direction.

That the downwash concept switch initially cost Ferrari load in the tunnel does however go some way to explain why Haas waited so long in the season to fit the extensive upgrade.. you factor in 1-2 GP of teething issues with a fully upgraded car and they left themselves 2-3 races to make the most of it. From this I'd assume it took a while before they found gains that made up for the loss in load & then enough performance to make a costly upgrade package worthwhile

From Guenther's comments at COTA they expected to gain a lot of laptime from the upgrade, particularly in race trim. What they seemed to have done instead is produce a car that just has different characteristics but not necessarily faster on average, with the new car suiting kmag more and hulk less

There's another, more conspiratorial option. Guenther's "we expected more" comments were publicly to save face that Haas never found the gains they expected, and that the COTA upgrade package was delayed for so long because they never found the expected gains. And in the end they brought it as late as they could but with enough grand Prix left in the season that they may discover/learn things about the car/setup/aero that will inform them of the right development direction. Given how much Haas take their design cues and inspiration from Ferrari it's possible that without Ferrari doing much to their car, Haas had less of an idea than normal. Last year all Haas did for Hungary was adapt their base car more towards the F1-75 for instance.

Interesting takes, thanks.

[organic]

Replied in the Haas team thread

Article about the sf23's development

Talks about how switching away from bathtubs lost downforce but eventually opened up development paths (previously speculated)

The Austria floor was optimization based on the sidepod changes and front wing to improve overall balance

Suzuka floor change aimed to improve consistency of downforce. This meant better balance and drivers can experience similar characteristics corner to corner.

https://formu1a.uno/ferrari-le-nuove-pa ... ni-future/

Ah this is why Hulk doesn't want the new package.

Perhaps.. but the Haas is not the sf23: Ferrari abandoned the bathtubs and 6 weeks later had a downwash concept while Haas with 1.5x the wind tunnel time waited 6 months before manufacturing their new car. It can be assumed from the lead time that they, unlike Ferrari, waited to see significant gains in the tunnel before committing to the new direction.

That the downwash concept switch initially cost Ferrari load in the tunnel does however go some way to explain why Haas waited so long in the season to fit the extensive upgrade.. you factor in 1-2 GP of teething issues with a fully upgraded car and they left themselves 2-3 races to make the most of it. From this I'd assume it took a while before they found gains that made up for the loss in load & then enough performance to make a costly upgrade package worthwhile

From Guenther's comments at COTA they expected to gain a lot of laptime from the upgrade, particularly in race trim. What they seemed to have done instead is produce a car that just has different characteristics but not necessarily faster on average, with the new car suiting kmag more and hulk less

There's another, more conspiratorial option. Guenther's "we expected more" comments were publicly to save face that Haas never found the gains they expected, and that the COTA upgrade package was delayed for so long because they never found the expected gains. And in the end they brought it as late as they could but with enough grand Prix left in the season that they may discover/learn things about the car/setup/aero that will inform them of the right development direction. Given how much Haas take their design cues and inspiration from Ferrari it's possible that without Ferrari doing much to their car, Haas had less of an idea than normal. Last year all Haas did for Hungary was adapt their base car more towards the F1-75 for instance.

To follow on from this, seems we weren't completely wrong:

Quote from KMag about the updated car: “The updated car is more similar to the 2024 concept. We didn't find more load but it is easier to drive because the balance is more constant."

[Zynerji]

So. No one talking about Nico using the old spec car and being faster than the new spec.

When will this complete failure of a team principal be held accountable for how awful this is? Can anyone explain the relentless disappointment of this team, and how its allowed to continue?

The fact that Steiner is still employed in F1 is utterly mind boggling to me.

[AR3-GP]

So. No one talking about Nico using the old spec car and being faster than the new spec.

When will this complete failure of a team principal be held accountable for how awful this is? Can anyone explain the relentless disappointment of this team, and how its allowed to continue?

The fact that Steiner is still employed in F1 is utterly mind boggling to me.

They could not find any more performance from the old car. To continue with it was not viable.

They knew the new car would be slower but it's a more stable platform with a higher development ceiling. It will take time to unlock that potential.