F1 | Haas sacrifices the flying lap but the pace is convincing

Among the less flashy teams at the three days of 2024 Formula 1 pre-season testing was Haas F1. Last season's bottom player certainly didn't shine, nor did he steal the attention with high-sounding performances.

At first glance, a start to the year along the lines of what we have seen in recent seasons, with Haas slowly sliding from the center of the group to the rear, without having the concrete opportunity to react.

The team now directed by Ayao Komatsu, however, has favored painstaking work on race pace, the true Achilles' heel of last season which relegated the team to the role of Cinderella. The VF-23, especially in the hands of Nico Hulkenberg, had given excellent results on the flying lap, and on several occasions, only to then lose all hope of scoring a few laps after the green light went out due to tragic tire management.

This is why the American team focused its work mainly on long runs with a full tank. Better tire management was needed to avoid the crazy degradation seen in 2023 and this is why neither Hulkenberg, nor Kevin Magnussen, often appeared at the top of the timesheets.

Hulkenberg achieved the 14th fastest time overall over the three days of testing using a set of C1 compounds. Magnussen, on the other hand, was the driver who closed out the ranking, not going beyond last place. As mentioned, the two did many runs with a full tank.

On the first day they both drove C2 and C3 with a full tank of petrol. The second day, however, was dedicated exclusively to testing the C3, always with significant loads of petrol. On the last day the three hardest compounds – C1, C2 and C3 – were tested on long runs and only a couple of sets dedicated to fast laps.

At the end of the test, Ayao Komatsu better explored the work program of the team he has been managing since this year, underlining how consistency of pace and tire management were the team's real objectives, even to the detriment of the flying lap which he achieved in 2023. gave them the only satisfactions.

“I think you can see from the consistency of the lap times that we've made a good improvement. But the fact is that last year I felt like our base car wasn't consistent enough. So whatever we did, both for the car set-up that for driving, after five laps the tires were dead”.

“This year's car, however, seems to me to be quite good, quite consistent, so much so that we can manipulate the degradation through the way we set the car or ask the drivers to drive it. So yes, I think it's a good step forward, but it's really the base car. I'm not saying our base car is great. It's not. You can see that at high speeds it still lacks a lot of downforce. But at least it has a consistent pace, the drivers, both Kevin and Nico , they know what they're getting every single lap.”

“For this reason we focused only on the first day and the second day, without worrying about doing laps with little fuel on board. So, our mentality was focused on managing or improving, understanding and improving the problem we have had last year during the race. So it's as if we worked backwards. Normally, even on the race weekend, you prepare the car, you do everything with low fuel, then you do the qualifying simulation, then you he does the simulation with a lot of fuel, but we did the opposite.”

“There's no point in qualifying in P7 and getting relegated on Sunday. I'd rather qualify in P14, but have a car to race in and get top 10. That's our goal. I'm not going to show up here next weekend all of a sudden and start optimizing the car for qualifying, no. If I've done that in the last two days, there's nothing left to do. We need to find the right compromise. Today is the day we'll discover the compromise.”

Regarding the problems encountered in the tests, Komatsu underlined what problems afflict the VF-24. “It's not just about the high-speed corners, for us high speed is the downforce, but also the balance and stability of the car, etc. All the problems are still there. But again, you know, it depends on how many problems do you want to solve for qualifying. And how many problems do you want to solve for the race, based on last year. We are focusing much, much more on solving fuel problems.”