Haas is considering adopting a Red Bull-inspired design concept for the first time in their Formula 1 history, as opposed to Ferrari’s.
Since Haas joined the grid in 2016, the Ferrari customer team has mostly imitated the Italian design concept, but it now seems like a better time to adopt a new tack.
Haas are on the cusp of adopting a similar design concept in light of the significant progress picked up by Mercedes customer teams McLaren and Williams after borrowing the Red Bull sidepod concept.
Haas technical director Simone Resta said that the team “might change” its strategy slightly as the American team might want to steal a page from Red Bull’s playbook as well.
“Clearly the bodywork is something that is getting a lot of attention,” Resta said in an interview with Motorsport.com. “Formula 1 is very glamorous so yeah, I understand it.
“But if you look at the bodywork, essentially you’ve got the follow-up part of the undercut where the style is similar between all the cars, there’s some who have pushed a little bit more, some a bit less.
“Then there is the side part, which is very wide, and then there is the rearward part. In this part, we are a bit different to the others.
“Of course, we have been looking at things from the beginning of the regulations, so from the middle of 2021, we thought we picked up the best option for us.”
“We keep reviewing it. We reviewed it for this year’s car and we keep looking at it. We might change, we might not. Let’s see.”
With just 11 points, Haas is even further behind Williams in seventh place in the Constructors’ Championship. Despite this, Nico Hulkenberg has been incredibly quick for the Ferrari customer team in qualifying this year to the point where he has appeared in the same number of Q3s (four) as Sergio Perez from Red Bull.
Interestingly, Ferrari and Haas have both had trouble maintaining race pace.
Resta acknowledges that time is rapidly running out for the midfield team to decide if they are going to break from Ferrari’s design concept this season or in 2024.
“We are entering into a window where it’s more and more difficult to upgrade this year’s car in terms of timing,” he added. “But still, we are in July and the season will end up close to the end of the year.
“So technically there could be time to change also the complete bodywork if we think it makes the car faster.”
