Haas’ major reworking of its VF-23 chassis has appeared for the first time ahead of the United States Grand Prix.
The team, which fell to ninth in the championship standings at the last round, is the latest to move its development in line with the trend established by dominant champions Red Bull. The revised design features the steeply sloping sidepods familiar from the cars which have won all bar six of the 39 grands prix since the current technical regulations were introduced.
Kevin Magnussen is encouraged by the scale of development the team has brought for its home race. “It’s good, it’s nice to see the upgrade on the car finally,” he said.
“We haven’t had many upgrades to the car this year. It’s been a tough year in terms of just finding performance. The guys have been really struggling this year to make gains on the car we’ve had.”
The team does not expect an immediate improvement in its performance from the upgrade, and will have only a single practice session to evaluate it before they are locked into their set-up for the sprint event. However Magnussen hopes what they learn from it will ensure they are on the right track for 2024.
“This upgrade is an exciting one because it’s very different,” he said. “On paper it’s not actually meant to be more downforce as such, but it’s a new concept and it’s hopefully the concept that we’ll be using for next year’s car. And if not a big gain in performance, then at least that it’s some good learning and research into next year.”
While the update may not increase the overall downforce of the car, Magnussen says the team hopes that by improving its dynamics while cornering they will be able to treat their tyres better.
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“A big problem with our car this year has been that it doesn’t treat the tyres very well in the race,” he said. “So we often just struggle with tyre life in the races. The pace that other people are able to maintain, we seem to fall off much more.”
“If you can [improve] the characteristics of the car, the through-corner balance and hopefully the structure and the strength of the flow on the car that could solve that issue or help that issue,” he explained. “So that’s of course what we are hoping. Nonetheless, it’s exciting.”
Haas VF-23 upgrade pictures
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