(Motorsports news) Haas brought a massive package of modifications to Austin, and the team struggled to optimize the VF-23, as did others who faced the problem of just having FP1 to hone new vehicles. Following the Saturday sprint, the team decided to take both cars out of parc ferme and install a greater downforce rear wing to prevent rear sliding and protect the tyres.
As a result, Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg had to vacate their 14th and 16th grid positions and start Sunday’s main race from the pit lane. Hulkenberg finished 13th and Magnussen 16th on the road, with both drivers benefiting from the disqualifications of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc. Steiner believed that switching cars and surrendering track position at the start was a wise decision.
“I mean, today was better than yesterday for Haas,” he said after the race. “Thank goodness we made the decision to exit the pit lane with the modified aero setup. Obviously, Haas now need to look at data and stuff like this to get a better starting position with the setup in Mexico. We were a little behind schedule, knowing we only had one hour.” It’s not that we did a horrible job; it was simply that it was really tight, such a significant upgrade, and coming in here.
“But we knew the risk, and we took it, but I believe we know a lot more now than we did before.” And perhaps, we’ll be able to perform it in Mexico.” Steiner stated that assessing the potential of the new package after only one weekend is difficult.
“I don’t know how good it is yet,” he told me. “At least both drivers could race some people today, because Haas was just being overtaken the last five [races], and at least we could overtake some people today.” Are we up to the task? No. We need to make better use of it. At the very least, we’re heading in the right way.” Magnussen agreed that altering the rear wing had paid off, albeit he still grumbled about the rear slipping during the race.
“I think it helped,” the Dane stated when asked about it. “Not nearly enough. Of course, Haas was still not competitive enough, but it helped. And, yes, we’ll look into it and see what we come up with. “As I previously stated, we aided the situation. I believe we ran a better race than we would have otherwise. Even though we started from the pitlane and finished 14th, I believe we had a better race.”
“I’m still curious to see how it evolves when Haas get to play with the setup a little more and optimize things better,” he added of the update package. “We continue to visit all sorts of tracks. And we all know how things can fluctuate. And things could change in the next race. With the ambient pressure and all, Mexico is a really interesting race as well. So, let’s see what happens.”
