Haas has launched the car which will compete in its first season without the leadership of former team boss Guenther Steiner.
Haas’ new car, dubbed the VF-24, sees the team lean more into a predominantly black look, which has become a trend across the F1 grid as teams strip away paint to save weight.
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The major departure from the 2023 model in terms of livery is that the nose of the car and the portions around the cockpit are now black, not white, although red remains on the front and rear wing.
The new season looks set to be a crucial one in the longer future of the Haas team, with Steiner, who led the team from its inception, not given a new contract by team boss Gene Haas after finishing last in the championship.
Steiner and team owner Gene Haas fundamentally disagreed on the direction of the team — Steiner felt Haas needed to invest more in personnel, equipment and facilities to keep up with the team’s rivals, while Haas has felt the team must do more with the existing level of resources.
Rookie team boss Ayao Komatsu will take the team into the new season, with drivers Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg returning for a second season together as teammates.
“I’m looking forward to seeing the VF-24 running and racing — a sentiment I know I share with our partners and indeed the entire team,” Gene Haas, Chairman of MoneyGram Haas F1 Team, said.
“In Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen, we also know we’ve got a great pair of drivers behind the wheel, their experience will prove invaluable again as we develop our program through the year.
“We’ve used the off-season to put the processes in place to be better and ultimately improve our overall performance. Soon we get to see how we’re doing.”
Komatsu said the team should go into the new year with low expectations.
“Out of the gates in Bahrain, I still think we’re going to be towards the back of the grid, if not last,” he said in the press release unveiling the team’s new car for 2024.
Haas waited for much of 2023 to deliver a big car upgrade at the U.S. Grand Prix at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas, but it did not yield the improvement the team had hoped for.
Komatsu said that upgrade has delayed the team’s progress coming into the new season.
He added: “The reason our launch-spec car is not going to be quick enough in Bahrain is not because of the quality of the people we have here, but it’s because we started late and then we stopped for two months to do the Austin upgrade.
“It really diverted resource, so we lost time there, but the team is finding good gains in the wind tunnel so that’s positive and in terms of characteristics, it’s going in the right direction.”
Komatsu then alluded to his disliking of previous processes at the team and said his Haas would take an all new approach to analysing its position coming out of Bahrain’s preseason test, which is held the week before the same venue hosts the opening race.
“The focus is to have a good test program for Bahrain so that we come away from the test having quality data for the team to analyse and understand which direction to develop the car. This means understanding the strength and weakness of the VF-24 accurately, then put a coherent plan together to produce updates on the car, which hasn’t happened previously.
“Drivers will play a stronger role too. Last year, in terms of subjective feedback from drivers, their understanding of what the weakness of the car was clear, however, we weren’t then able to reflect that in our car development program.
“With the changes we made in the team, we aim to address this issue with our drivers more in the loop of development paths so that nothing gets lost. As engineers we have all the data from many sensors, but the one thing we can’t do is drive the car and feel what’s going on. So, we’ve got to be able to understand and react to drivers’ feedback better.”
Source: www.espn.com