A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
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We want them to be ultra focused and not unusably long.
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Interesting to see louvres on a 2026 car. Looks realy cool. It looks almost like the old F2 cars in profile with that massive shark fin.
Also WOW, this car is very, very different from the RB22 (render) as far as I can tell.
The front wing is extremely different with no little winglet on the outboard element, but rather that outwards-facing kink in the Y-plane that follows the entire length of the element. I assume it wouldn't spin up any kind of outwashing vortex, so could it be trying to create some kind of stagnation point to control the airflow hitting the fornt tyre?
The bargeboard looks interesting. This is clearly looking like a huge point of variation between the cars. They are also clearly looking quite similar to the outer bargeboard elements of the 2017-2021 cars with those slats. They do appear to differ between the photos for some reason though. They have more of an airfoil shape in the front renders, but appear to be flat, angled elements in the side shots.
SIdepods are looking interesting. It's similar to the pseudo-bathtub/ramps of the 2023-2024 Alpine cars.
Floor looks pretty basic though. I doubt this is at all representative of what they will bring to testing, given the relative lack of slots in the rear corner of the floor compared to the (presumably) very early RB22 render. I'm guessing Haas are keeping their cards close to their chest here.
But all of this might be completely irrelevant, given the fact that the car seemingly has rears on the front. Very odd thing to see. I'm guessing we're looking at something about as representative as their 2022 render.
Last edited by bananapeel23 on 19 Jan 2026, 17:24, edited 5 times in total.
A myriad of questions from this “launch” including:
why are there 4 rear tires?
where is the front aero actuation?
why is the barge board less than the full volume?
is the front suspension actually connected to the chassis?
I suspect this is about as accurate as their initial 2022 render was, sadly.
The barge board was less than full volume in the Red Bull render as well. This might be a case of them preferring to avoid inwashing the tyre wake over trying to extract airflow from the floor.
As for front aero actuation. It's likely a case of it being under the nose cone. I'm not sure, but I think it might even be visible in one of the renders.
But yes, this is probably a VF-22 render situation, albeit this version looks a little more like a real car than that one ever did, disregarding the rear tyres at the front. I could actually see something like this thing on track, assuming it had fronts and rears.
Last edited by bananapeel23 on 19 Jan 2026, 17:41, edited 1 time in total.
This render looks so cursed with those chonkers for front tires lol.
Other than that, yes this is quite different from the FIA render, however, I don't think the real car will look like this, primarily because what happened when they "launched" VF22.
