James Hinchcliffe ‘brought the magic’ quip as Haas shine at Mexican GP

IndyCar star turned Formula 1 analyst James Hinchcliffe quipped that he “may have sorted some things out” on the Haas car.

He made that joke after it was put to him, during the F1 Nation podcast, that Haas is a team on a roll ever since Hinchcliffe took part in a test with the American squad. At the Mexican Grand Prix, Oliver Bearman claimed his best Formula 1 result of fourth, with only the brilliance of Max Verstappen denying him and Haas a first podium.

James Hinchcliffe: The Haas lucky charm?

Last month, Haas continued their TPC [Testing of Previous Cars] programme – facilitated by their Toyota Gazoo Racing alliance – as they descended on the Mugello circuit in Italy. There, Hinchcliffe was behind the wheel of the VF-23, a car he shared with former Haas driver Romain Grosjean, who received his long-awaited farewell F1 run.

Haas’ upgraded current challenger, the VF-25, meanwhile has been excelling, and hit new heights in Mexico with Bearman at the wheel. The F1 rookie crossed the line P4, and for a time was looking set to make the podium, before Verstappen pulled off a remarkable soft-tyre stint on a one-stop strategy, to claim the final podium place.

Hinchcliffe, six times an IndyCar race winner, was joined by former Sauber and Haas driver, turned Mercedes F1 ambassador Esteban Gutierrez on the Mexican GP edition of the F1 Nation podcast.

Host Tom Clarkson told Gutierrez: “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Hinch drove a TPC day for Hass a few weeks back, and ever since then, they’ve been going great guns. And I’m convinced…”

At that point, Gutierrez took over with: “He brought the magic to the team!”

Hinchcliffe, in response, joked: “I may have, you know, sorted some things out on the car. It’s no big deal, it’s not a big deal.”

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But onto the more serious stuff, as Gutierrez delved into some driver talk, asking Hinchcliffe how he found the experience at the wheel of Haas’ 2023 car.

“Unbelievable,” he said. “It started in the wet, so it was not exactly your ideal starting [point]. Track I’d never driven. Car I’d never driven in the wet, but it dried out at the end of the day.”

Asked if the outing was in-line with his expectations of the car or differed, Hinchcliffe added: “It exceeded expectations.

“I mean, you go in knowing what it’s capable of on paper, seeing it on TV, being able to judge from onboards compared to what an Indy car would do, sort of thing. But even then, you’re just kind of blown away.

“You’ve got to recalibrate what you think is possible behind the wheel of a car.

“I knew the braking was going to be good, so did it impress me? Yes. But I sort of expected it. You know that the high speed is going to be unbelievable, and it was, and I sort of expected it.

“The one that blew me away, and this is getting a little inside baseball, a little driver talk, but combined traction. The potential and combined traction absolutely floored me, like, how early mid-corner, still fully loaded, you could just start feeding in the throttle. Rear didn’t step out. It didn’t squat down and make the front understeer.

“I mean, I was clearly way below the limit of the car because it was just doing everything you wanted it to do and then some. It was really cool.”

Hinchcliffe must have been rather handy at the wheel, as Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu liked what he saw.

Asked by the media in Singapore how Hinchcliffe did driving the VF-23, Komatsu replied: “The thing is, we’ve got nothing to compare against.

“It was very tricky conditions when he got in the car. He did it well and then finally, I think, he had one run with slick tyres, and he really enjoyed it.

“So I think it was really nice for somebody like him to actually get in our car to understand exactly what the current generation Formula 1 car feels like.”

Haas is P8 in the F1 2025 Constructors’ Championship with four rounds to go. Bearman’s Mexican GP heroics re-vitalised the team’s hopes of claiming sixth, with Racing Bulls only 10 points up the road in that position.

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