Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says the US outfit won’t copy Red Bull’s bodywork for the sake of adopting the style of a faster car, as many other changes to its package must be considered.
Red Bull’s rivals are likely burning the midnight oil to try and understand the unfair advantage gained by the team’s dominant RB19 this season and which is extending the outfit’s 2022 winning streak.
Many point to the car’s straight-line speed and massive DRS advantage as the source of its supremacy.
But it’s likely that the bull’s comfortable edge is rooted in the homogeneity of its overall package, or in the sum of all the parts of its aero platform rather than in a specific stroke of design genius associated with the RB19’s most visible element: its bodywork.
While Haas’ engineers are submitting Red Bull’s contender to their scrutiny – like all other teams on the grid – Steiner dismissed any in-season overhaul of the US outfit’s VF-23.
“You always try, and we have tried different concepts, but you cannot jump completely to what Red Bull is doing, because you’ve got your chassis, your cooling installation, your radiator installation, so you cannot jump,” Steiner said in Miami.
“You try to do more going that way and, obviously, I think everybody’s trying to test something, but until we are one hundred percent sure that that is a step forward, why would you go there?
Read also:
Horner: Red Bull intra-team rivalry a ‘luxury problem’, but equality key
“We are evaluating which way to go next year, but this year it’s more like trying to get the air somewhere else and see if it works or not.
“But just going with the bodywork of Red Bull at the moment which you could copy, doesn’t mean that you go faster, because there’s a lot [to change] around it to make that work.
“Maybe for next year we’ll go there, but at the moment, there is no panic reaction to go there, because I think our car in the midfield is still pretty strong.
“We’ve under-delivered I must say, and we will get a good [results] day like some people have a good day.”
Haas aerodynamicist Juan Molina echoed Steiner’s comments but underscored the importance of understanding the performance of a package as a whole when analyzing a rival’s design.
“It’s not only the bodywork, but how that works with your floor and your rear wing and how you have the different parts of the car,” Molina explained, quoted by Motorsport.com.
“As the regulations evolve, we are converging towards a platform of performance on low speed versus high speed, etc. So, as you go towards there, the question is, where do you find the performance?
“That’s where your platform, the link between your aerodynamics and where the car is on the ground, is important.
“So, if you look at Red Bull, you can see they know where that car is and where they want to put the car exactly all the time. And that’s something that is becoming more important as the regulation evolves.”
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
The post Haas: No 'panic reaction' to adopt Red Bull-style bodywork appeared first on F1i.com.
