The Haas F1 team currently sits 8th in the Constructors’ Championship, with 11 points, while Alfa Romeo has just one less, so the situation could change in the next phase of the season in Singapore.
However, for the American home race in Austin, which will be held in October, the American team is preparing such serious updates for the VF-23 that the publication Auto Motor und Sport, which reported on this, called the modernized chassis a “B version”. During development, Haas was largely guided by the solutions implemented by Red Bull Racing this year.
There is no doubt that Haas needs to make some serious moves if the team wants to get ahead of its direct rivals at the end of the season. Suffice it to remember what Nico Hulkenberg said after the Italian Grand Prix: “The only positive moment was the start. Then we were too slow, the car didn’t have good balance and the tires wore out too much.”
At the same time, Williams, Alfa Romeo and AlphaTauri are gradually improving. But in recent months Haas has been working intensively on a series of technical innovations that should be ready for the American Grand Prix. Back at Zandvoort, team manager Günther Steiner said: “We are modernizing the car significantly so that we can better understand which direction to take next year.”
Conceptually, the VF-23 chassis has been developed from the ideas captured in the Ferrari SF-23, which makes sense since the American team sources many of the car’s parts in Maranello. This obviously defines the basic architecture of the chassis, but now we have to admit that this concept has outlived its usefulness.
“No matter what we do, we can no longer achieve better lap times,” Steiner admits.
According to the German magazine, the modernized version of the VF-23 will differ from the current one in that instead of high side pontoons it will have others that will resemble the configuration of this area of the RB19. Particularly on the Red Bull Racing car, the air intake openings are narrower and wider and the pontoons also have a very distinctive profile.
On the VF-23, the rear suspension components are in the path of the airflow; At the same time, it is more difficult to achieve efficient operation of the bottom of the car, because due to the formation of a turbulence zone in the area of the rear wheels, the performance of the diffuser is reduced. Ferrari suffers from the same problem.
The improved version of the Haas car will not only resemble the RB19 in terms of pontoons; ideas borrowed from Red Bull will also be used in the design of the underbody and contours of the engine case.
Since the chassis, transmission, radiator layout and suspension geometry will remain the same, the American team’s engineers can only partially test the ideas for now, with full implementation planned for 2024. Die. The point is that the modernized version of the chassis will only be a kind of compromise, but the team is willing to take the risk.
“The risk will be even greater if we only find out in Bahrain in 2024 that the new direction we have chosen turns out to be wrong,” Steiner emphasized.
Over the course of the remaining five rounds of the season, starting in Austin, the team plans to gather information that will be used in the development of the VF-24.
It will differ significantly from its predecessor as it will feature a new chassis and a new Ferrari transmission. Their developers were largely guided by Red Bull’s ideas, on the basis of which the suspension geometry will be adjusted. Ferrari is moving in the same direction, which makes it a little easier for Haas.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
