F1 | Steiner and Resta on the new Haas and on how the 2022 regulations and the pandemic affected the development of the car
Uralkali Haas Team Principal, Steiner, said that he's optimistic, but that he still cannot say now how the performance of the 2022 car will be.
With today’s unveiling of the new Uralkali Haas, it can be said that we are one step closer to the revolution that will hit Formula 1 in this 2022 season.
No car in the flesh was presented, but the graphical representation of the new Haas VF-22 gave us a taste of what we will see on track in a few weeks.
Launching the new era of Formula 1 cars 🙌
— Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team) February 4, 2022
Proudly presenting the #VF22 #HaasF1 #FWD2022 pic.twitter.com/JvK9YoJjbb
Immediately after the unveiling of the new livery in the colors of the Russian flag, which refers to the main sponsor of the American team, Team Principal Guenther Steiner and Technical Director Simone Resta answered some questions from MotorLat and other selected media.
“I think the model we’ve presented today is different from the actual F1 car in many areas. Clearly the amount of freedom the designers have this year is reduced compared to the past.
"There is a lot of potential to work on, on the details, even if they don’t look ‘dramatically’ different to each other there’s a lot of things to work on,” Resta said, explaining how the VF-22 shown on renderings is still under development and the actual F1 car might be different in some areas at testing.
Then Team Principal Steiner opened up to what the main objectives and expectations are for the team during this upcoming season:
“It’s a whole new car, it’s always exciting when you fire it up and you go out on track for the first time, so our first expectation is to hit the track and see how the car behaves, if it is reliable. Because if there’s reliability you can keep going and you can develop it, collect data and try to work on the best setup for the first race.”
“Our main goal is basically to go fast, but I cannot say now how the performance of the car will be, because I’d have to see the other cars," he added.
“I don’t know if we’ll be in the midfield, but what I can say now is that I’m optimistic, because I’ve seen how Simone [Resta] and his group developed the car, how hard they work on it and the improvements we’ve had during the last season,” the Italian said.
Building a new car with these new regulations, with the cost cap, and above all with the restrictions due to the pandemic was certainly different and more challenging for all the teams, and to our question of how this situation had affected the development of the car, Steiner answered:
“Regarding the cost cap, it was not very difficult for us, because we have never worked with the amount of money that the big teams are used to. It was much easier for us to adjust to that budget, this has never been a problem.
"The main problem for us was the fact that we started with a technical team, I wouldn't say completely new, but most of the people were new entries, because in 2020 a lot of people left, a lot more Ferrari people arrived and the fact of working a little less with Dallara also had an impact.
"As for the Covid-19 situation I can say it is a common situation, we are all now working in these conditions, both we and you journalists.
“You work a lot without earning much, because everything is more difficult in the pandemic, but in these two years we have gotten used to working more to get less. This pushed us to start even more determined and I can say that we have made progress."
