Simone Resta: We learned a lot last year

Haas F1 Technical Director Simone Resta spoke about the team’s preparations for the upcoming season and assured that when developing the VF-23 car, he and his engineers did everything they could to ensure that it was free of the shortcomings of its predecessor.

Yesterday at Silverstone, the US team spent a filming day and the car’s initial break-in period and continued with the final preparation phase for pre-season testing in Bahrain, which starts on February 23.

Simone Resta has no doubts that the VF-23 is better and faster than last year’s car, so hopefully Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg can battle for points on a regular basis.

“Last year taught us a lot, and I think we were able to apply all the experience we gained while making VF-23,” he said. – On some circuits last year’s car worked very well, on others – worse, and like many other teams we had problems due to longitudinal build-up. But we hope that the behavior of the car at high speeds on straight lines will now change for the better.

We started developing VF-23, analyzed all the information gathered last year, made a list of priorities and tried to make sure that our new project would allow for progress in all areas.

Of course we always strive for better results, but I think 8th place in the Constructors’ Championship has already been a good step forward. This will allow the team to improve its financial position and of course we will try to use all these investments as efficiently as possible to demonstrate further progress. In particular, one of the tasks is to upgrade the car more intensively during the season.

It should come as no surprise to anyone when I say that our chassis development program is much more extensive than last year. But work on the VF-23 has only just begun, the machine has just been created and the team continues to refine it. We have a modernization plan, but it is still too early to specify what and when we will implement.”