‘Red Bull concept’ failing to deliver as Haas fear the worst in Brazil

Haas boss Guenther Steiner said their performance was “not good enough” in the Brazil sprint with little hope existing for the Grand Prix.

With Red Bull having obliterated the competition since Formula 1 switched to ground effect aerodynamics in 2022, Haas were the latest team to begin the transition towards Red Bull’s glowing downwash concept.

The American outfit introduced a B-Spec VF-23 for their home race at the Circuit of The Americas, Steiner dubbing it as the biggest upgrade package in their history, but the results are yet to show.

Guenther Steiner tears into Haas Brazil sprint performance

While this initial stage of the upgrades has been done with F1 2024 learning in mind, it is concerning that a key Haas issue of burning through the Pirelli tyre performance has not gone away, Kevin Magnussen starting the sprint P11 and Nico Hulkemberg P12, but slumping to P16 and P18 respectively.

This was nowhere near good enough in the eyes of Steiner, with precious few encouraging signs emerging for the race, considering the cars were locked into parc ferme rules after the sole practice session.

“It’s a very disappointing result, starting P11 and P12 and finishing where we finished, it’s not good enough,” said Steiner.

“We have this tyre degradation and it just seems that we can’t get it under control. We need to keep working on it as there’s no way out of this without a lot of effort. Tomorrow is going to be another tough day.”

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Hulkenberg believes Haas’ issues all stem from the simple fact that the performance of the VF-23 is “too poor”, so even though both he and Magnussen used the medium tyre for the sprint, while the soft tyre was the predominant choice, Haas were going to be in trouble regardless.

“I don’t think it would have mattered which tyre we started on, at the end of the day our performance is too poor,” Hulkenberg conceded.

“We’re missing downforce compared to the others and we’re always going to pay the price for that.

“It’s not looking great for tomorrow, we can’t change anything overnight as we’re under parc ferme, so it’s not the best outlook.”

Haas find themselves P10 and last in the Constructors’ Championship, four points behind Alfa Romeo a position ahead.

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