Haas Team Principal Guenther Steiner confirmed the team will abandon their current design philosophy in favor of a Red Bull-style downwash design starting from Austin.
Haas have finally come to the conclusion that their current design concept has his a development ceiling, as their 2023 Formula 1 car tends to be fast in qualifying, but then drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen end up spending their races in free fall as their VF-23 viciously degrades its tyres.
And while Haas have not done any major upgrades to their car in 2023, the team still had money to go for a major upgrade package towards the end of this season, which Steiner confirmed in Singapore.
He told the media: “The car will change quite a bit. We will change the concept, although of course we will have certain limitations with our chassis.
“We’re trying to follow the same path that most teams have chosen. The package is coming to Austin and will be the biggest change we have implemented during a season,” he revealed.
Haas debated whether the upgrade should come now or in 2024
Steiner admitted the team was hesitant whether to introduce the package in 2023 or wait for 2024, but decided to introduce it this season to try and understand it ahead of 2024.
“We tested the new parts in the wind tunnel before the summer break,” he said. “We want to know what direction we are heading for next year.
“The question was, should we bring it this year or only next season. But we now want to use the opportunity to learn as much as possible this season and incorporate the knowledge into our development for next year.
“You have to take risks, and it’s worth the risk because we can now find out what our change of direction in the concept brings,” the Italian maintained.
“The original development plan for this year was to bring several upgrades to the track, but that didn’t make sense because we didn’t find any performance,” Steiner added. “That’s why we didn’t bring them and that gave us the resources we needed for this big development package.”
But can Haas achieve a strong performance step like McLaren did with their midseason upgrade?
“We need a lot of magic for that to happen,” Steiner pointed out. “I’ll never say never but it will be very difficult because they [McLaren] have had some very good results in the recent races.
“They have taken a big step forward, you have to recognize that. That wasn’t luck either, they did a good job,” he concluded.