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Haas introduced its first major upgrade of the season at the Chinese Grand Prix, with the VF-24 fitted with updated floor barriers, mirrors, cooling outlets and rear brake duct inlets.
Both drivers were competitive in Shanghai with the new parts, as Kevin Magnussen finished 10th in the sprint while Nico Hulkenberg reached Q3 and scored a point in the main race, from ninth on the grid.
However, the sprint format prevented Haas from carrying out meaningful comparative testing in China, which will happen again in Miami.
The American team will therefore wait until Imola to carefully compare the data of the new and previous versions of its car during a regular weekend, making the most of the testing sessions.
“Wind tunnel numbers aren’t everything, you know,” team principal Ayao Komatsu said at the Chinese Grand Prix on Thursday. “How the real car performs compared to the wind tunnel…
“What we measure on the track this year is also a little different from our expectations in the wind tunnel, so we need to understand that well.”
The Japanese expanded on the subject after Haas’ successful weekend, telling Autosport: “I don’t sit here and say ‘the upgrade worked perfectly’ or ‘100%, I’m convinced’. I don’t say not that.”
“But since it’s a sprint weekend, we can’t do real back-to-backs or anything, but we can measure in FP1. Not a comparison, just to see if there’s anything which is wrong or not. And we don’t see it so we think it works. But I’m not saying that 100%.
Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal, Haas F1 Team, Kevin Magnussen, Haas F1 Team, on the grid
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
“But until it’s proven that it doesn’t work, I have to trust the process. That’s why we decided to make updates here today on both cars. Because the competition is so tight. If we don’t trust our process, what’s the problem? So that’s what we’ve done.
“But when we go to Imola with the normal weekend, we will do things consecutively. Just evaluate, you know, whether everything we have done is correct or not.”
The Miami Grand Prix will mark Haas’ first home event of the season next weekend, with some additional new parts on the VF-24. However, Komatsu expects a “very small” performance gain.
“We bring [the package] in three phases. This [in China] was, I would say, a small step. But Miami will be even smaller, so Imola will be another step smaller. So it’s just progressive.
“If you get a tenth, you know how much that changes the qualifying position… And then a qualifying position could mean whether you’re going to make your first pass in traffic or in open air, right? this not? Then this will have a huge So, even if it seems – when I say – like a small difference in terms of lap time, the result could be huge.
If the comparison tests at Imola fail, Komatsu is confident Haas will still be able to make the most of the data to turn things around by the summer holidays.
“I hope that in Imola we can prove that what we did is right,” he added. “But in the worst case scenario, if we prove that what we did was wrong, we still have the possibility of rectifying the situation by mid-season,” he concluded.
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