Hulkenberg: Suzuka tires are subject to serious degradation

The Haas F1 team is preparing well for the Japanese Grand Prix, which will be held at the Suzuka circuit. In Australia, Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen finished in the top ten and next weekend at Haas we would of course like to build on this success, especially because both drivers of the American team have extensive experience at this circuit. However, this will not be easy to achieve…

Ayo Komatsu, team leader: “The first three races of the season, which took place on circuits with different characteristics, are behind us. I am very happy that we managed to get points in two of the three stages. In the races our pace is better than in qualifying, this was especially noticeable in Melbourne and this is certainly our strong point.

At the same time, in Australia we saw the VF-24’s weaknesses emerge during qualifying, and unfortunately it will be much the same in Suzuka too. This is due to the characteristics of the circuit, where the first sector consists of fast corners.

And in Bahrain, and in the first sector in Jeddah, and in Melbourne, we saw that our car does not cope well with high-speed sections of the circuits, so serious difficulties await us in Suzuka. It is important to understand how to reduce this speed deficit and achieve the desired balance and grip level before qualifying. Moreover, overtaking on this circuit is not easy.

All these difficulties still need to be addressed, but we have a few ideas, so during training on Friday we will experiment and try to achieve improvements. “If we talk about race pace, I predict that, like in Melbourne, it will be better than the speed in qualifying, and when developing race tactics we will have to take that into account and try to use it.”

Nico Hulkenberg: “The Suzuka circuit is considered a classic and is truly legendary. It is difficult and requires a refined driving technique, making it quite difficult to achieve a perfect lap in qualifying. But difficult problems are interesting to solve.

Japanese fans are always full of enthusiasm and prepare wonderful gifts for the drivers, so I packed a separate suitcase to take everything home!

Suzuki is characterized by a combination of slow, medium and fast corners, and probably for the first time this year we will compete on a track where the rubber is subject to serious degradation. It will be interesting to see how we compare to our rivals in this regard.

Historically, racing on the Japanese circuit has been associated with severe degradation of the rubber, and it is important to try to understand this problem; the information gathered in Suzuka will be useful to us later in the year.

Of course we see some positive signs this season and the feeling in the cockpit behind the wheel of the car is already better than six months ago, but it is still too early to draw conclusions.”

Kevin Magnussen: “The Suzuka round is one of those races of the season where you get the maximum pleasure out of driving. The Japanese audience creates a unique atmosphere and this in itself is always an interesting experience, because this country has a special fan culture.

In theory, Suzuka is not the best fit for our car, but I still believe we will have a more efficient car this year. Even if we don’t qualify well, we hope we can have a good race.”