Haas VF-18, 2018

Haas is first to reveal images of its new car for 2018

2018 F1 season

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Haas has become the first team to reveal its car for the 2018 F1 season.

The VF-18 was revealed without warning on social media, making the American team the first to reveal images of its new racer.

Gene Haas said his team has “eliminated a lot of the variables where we knew we were weak” ahead of the new season. “We’ve focused on what it’s going to take to get our car to be consistent and close that gap to the top teams.”

The renderings reveal little detail of the new car. The most striking change for 2018 – the addition of the Halo – is largely obscured by a dark background.

Team principal Guenther Steiner said the change was “the biggest part of the car’s evolution.”

“It took quite a bit of study by the aerodynamicists, but the designers had to work hard to modify the chassis so the halo could survive the mandated loads. The total minimum weight of the car increased because of the halo, and there’s a higher center of gravity simply because of the halo’s position. But, everyone is in the same boat.”

The car also lacks a shark fin, which has been cut back in the 2018 regulations.

“The regulations stayed pretty stable between 2017 and 2018, so the VF-18 is an evolution of our car from last year,” added Steiner. “It’s less about reinvention and more about refinement. You see elements we had from last year on the car this year.”

“Our 2017 car was actually pretty good, but we didn’t always get the best out of it, and that’s what we aimed to change in 2018. We got the car as light as possible to carry more ballast. We were able to do a better job of putting the weight where we wanted it.”

The team tweaked its livery on several occasions last year and has revised it again for the new season. “The livery is a little bit of a return to what we had on our first car, the VF-16,” said Steiner. “Its look is clean and precise, just like the machine tools made by Haas Automation.”

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Haas VF-18, 2018
Haas VF-18, 2018

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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71 comments on “Haas is first to reveal images of its new car for 2018”

  1. Well, so that is as anti climatic as a reveal gets, right? Pretty much a 2017 car with reduced fin and a halo on top. Also keeping the excitement up with the paintjob!

    1. Other than a potential major livery change, there was nothing much else going to happen as the technical rules have remained similar to last year.

      1. @tonyyeb “don’t hate on the halo you have only seen stuck on test versions i bet it’ll look great once teams integrate it into their chassis” -every F1fanatic user not against the halo, ever

        1. *racefan

        2. @mrboerns Errrrr ok…. I was pointing out that you had commented that it was an anti climatic reveal when the technical regs have hardly changed…. Soooooo what else were you expecting? It’s not like 2016 to 2017, or 2008 to 2009 changes. This is the second year of a major regs change, only tweaks such as the ones you’ve already mentioned which we already knew about.

          Anti-climaxes might be common for some people on Valentine’s day but this one pretty much lived up to what was expected.

          1. It’s my first Valentine’s Day since the introduction of the Halo.
            I’m excited already what’s going to happen tonight ;)

    2. Ofcourse it going to be a 2017 car with a halo on top, but look and compare the 2017 haas and this one, the sidepods are massivly different and look very complex, i love what they have done with it

    3. I can’t help myself, the car looks like a flip-flop.

  2. last year’s car with a halo tacked on top. OK.

    1. no its not, look at the detailing. and the engine and gearbox will be completely new. this will be a more developed car, and hopefully push Haas forward.

  3. Nice looking rear and I love the limited shark fin.
    With a better nose it’d be a real beauty
    Noticed no vents in the rear body which looks amazing

    1. I love the sidepods or the bodywork its more complex, and i like it more that way

  4. Tweet say “Lighter” but minimum weight has gone up. Gotta love marketing.

    1. its all about the ballast buddy, they made their car lighter, which lets them play with ballast, the ballast isn’t talked about much, but every team tries to lose weight on their car, and prefer to them add weight with ballast to reach minimum weight, I suspect some are even using fuel to add weight.

  5. The livery is definitely better than last year’s

  6. Wait, lighter?

    1. @mashiat if you mean the “more ballast” part I think that makes sense.

      1. @davidnotcoulthard Haas’ tweet said “lighter”.

        1. Relative to the minimum weight, ie they can put more ballast in.

  7. I was expecting a T-wing, glad it isn’t there, but not sure for how long.

    It looks nice if I’m honest.
    I will be rooting for them, wince they got me a discount in one of their machines, at least until the machine works

    1. If you lighten up the pictures (a lot) you can see a low Williams style one.

    2. You’ll be rooting for them… don’t you mean CNC routing?! XDDD

      1. ba dum tss

  8. The side-on view looks more like a 2016 Haas, and I’m not exactly sure whether I like it or not.

  9. Literally none of the halo beautification efforts we would have liked to see.

  10. Ferrari SF70 inspired sidepods then

  11. I was expecting more downstream of the halo aerodynamic changes on the bodywork.

  12. Despite the best efforts at hiding it against a dark background, the Halo still sticks out like a sore thumb.

    1. They could’ve made it more blend in, i hope the others can do it a bit better

    2. Imagine the shock in Haas’ pr department when they realize most races won’t be lit in …erm….shades of grey

    3. Indeeed. They have tried to hide the fin too by putting black paint. Red colour could have been exploited more. I wonder if any team would go for a non black halo!

    4. It only bothers me from the front view; from side-on and downward looking angles I don’t find it a problem.

    5. I don’t agree.. I think we will all get used to the halo VERY quickly if we accept that it is here. it was one of the last things I looked at. all you have to do is pretend the open space the drivers look through is made of glass and then the halo seems like a canopy, like the indycar canopy. I think f1 fans are at the moment in a rage against the halo, but soon will realise “it is not a big deal!” id prefer if they made racier sounding engines then getting rid of halo. I bet if you asked 100 people who are not car fans to comment on the car, they wont care one bit about the halo. 50-80% of audiences to an f1 race ARE NOT diehard f1 fans that look at every detail, those fans are only in the small percentage that visits websites like this, while the sound is something that has HUGELY changed to even the general population.

  13. the hare on the bargeboard suggests some kind of speed

    1. Or the meaning of ‘Haas’ in their forefathers’ language.

      1. Or the meaning of ‘Haas’ in their forefathers’ language.

        Tax evasion?

  14. Gene Haas said his team has “eliminated a lot of the variables where we knew we were weak”

    “The brakes were a variable where we knew we were weak, so we eliminated ’em”, quoth Gene Haas.

  15. Excited at this first look of the 2018 car. There seems to be a lot of flexibility on areo designs around the sidepods and bargeboard. The back end seems to be more tight and the fin is chopped off. Last year’s hanging winglets on the fins are not there. On the Haas car, it used to flex a lot. Overall a well packaged car, for a relatively less experienced team. But livery is still uninspiring. Let’s hope the mechanical areas are sorted, especially brakes.

  16. Michael Brown (@)
    14th February 2018, 16:29

    Better livery than last year!

  17. The only difference I can notice compared to VF-17 is the Halo, of course. Otherwise, the VF-18 looks pretty much the same design-wise as its predecessor (which is what I anticipated to be the case due to stable technical regulations).

  18. The combination of the sneaky, dark reveal, the halo and the rather boring livery are distracting from the fact that’s a serious good looking, aggressively styled and sexy car. Love the 2018 cars without the shark fin (but the halo…)

  19. I want to see the cars on the starting grid at Melbourne where all the Halos can be seen at once. That’ll be the moment when we see if they are cool or not.

    As for the Haas it looks nice but appears to be the same car as last year. Livery is better. And l almost forgot about the Halo, hidden effectively.

    Follow the Leaders Gene…

  20. That’s a nice looking car with great side pods. But they shouldn’t have tried to blend the halo with dark backgrounds.

  21. Vettel fan 17 (@)
    14th February 2018, 17:08

    Not much changes from last year. Sidepods and bargeboards look interesting though.

  22. Dullest livery in the whole universe. I bet even the CNC machine tools Haas produces have better looking liveries.

    1. I also find it a bit dull . But previous liveries were not especially better IMO. White/grey/black is often insipid, and red touches don’t change that.

  23. Why oh why oh why haven’t Hass gone down the Stars n Stripes livery route? Ever.

    1. Skylab
      Hass has been quite explicit about why he is in F1. To promote his business. I also think an American flaged livery might be doing too much on such.

    2. patriotism is an outdated theme, the world is moving on. why would HASS wont to align himself with conservatism and Trump? the world progresses. patriotism starts wars and feeds bullying, bigoty etc etc.

      1. The greediness for money starts wars

  24. I would love the car, but I can barely see in a sea of dark obsfucated parts.

  25. Horrible!!! nice try hiding the halo, still sucks!

  26. If i’m being nice… it looks neat, tidy, well proportioned, a nice evolution.

    If i’m being brutally honest, it’s just plain dull. I’m struggling to work out exactly what the point of this Haas team is. There just doesn’t appear to be much ambition to catch the imagination or move the team up the grid. I know the intention is/was to market their machine brand, but surely that’d be better served with at least some kind of an eye catching livery?, They’re boring us all into submission with their “last ink in the printer” livery designs. Throw a load of stars and stripes over it, some eagles, some bright colours….something…. anything!!

  27. Just some first thoughts:
    • They have got rid of the borders around the Haas logo, so that’s a definite improvement
    • Although it was expected, it’s a shame they’ve still got a thumb nose. It would’ve been nice if the FIA had finally sorted that out
    • The halo is as bad as I’d expected. So much for ‘it won’t be so bad once it’s on the final car’
    • That’s still a shark fin but a different shape. So much for banning them

    Beyond that the car appears so similar to last year, obviously that’s irrelevant if it performs a lot better. I’m presuming this car will continue to change in the next month before the season begins. Am I right in thinking Haas still don’t make their own cars?

    1. They have always designed and built their own cars per regulations. They just had a deal with Ferrari to buy the allowable parts from them. Plenty of the smaller teams have similar deals, Haas just pushes it to the limit of the regulations. Smart if you ask me. Lets the focus their resources on the parts they have to build for themselves as the learn and build up the team.

  28. Shame there still needs to be any shark fin at all. The backward sloping line of the car is gorgeous.

    I actually think the halo adds something to this car – it looks mean!

    Really, I would say its look is clean and precise, just like the machine tools made by Haas Automation, but don’t quote me on that.

  29. “Your name goes here” comes to mind. I hope Haas finds some sponsors soon. Their performance as a new team is respectable, but I do question how sustainable their operation is and how long Gene Haas can accept the ~$100M bill.

    1. They do not really want or need a main sponsor because the whole point of this was for Haas to get its name out there so their main sponsor is Haas Automation. They said if they get the right deal they would but the main name on the car will always be Haas

  30. I know the car looks pretty close to before but if you look there is plenty of changes. Also they said that their main focus on this car was to save as much weight as possible to be able to play with where the weight goes in the car because last year they were limited on setup. So I hope people realize how much effort they went through to shave weight off the car. Lets hope they have a good year!

    1. Im also sure that every team hides stuff and you are not seeing the real car until the first race. We have seen it more times then i can count where you see a car shown for the first time but has non of the new parts on it

  31. I miss the shark fin

    1. Wasn’t the shark fin I hated, it was those horrible appendages (t-wing was far to nicer phrase) that wobbled about on top of them that looked really awful.

      The one on the Haas in particular looked plain silly most of the time.

  32. I mean, is there any point? I find Haas to be the most, dull, mediocre team out there, yes out of the lot. Sorry Haas fans, but its hard to get a up-and-about for them.

    1. So because you don’t like them, they shouldn’t release a car.
      Hum.

      1. Never said i didnt like them. I just wonder sometimes why teams bother if they serve up nothing to inspire. Could say the same about the driver line up to

  33. The car itself looks slick & elegant, the livery a little dull but I like it better than last years car. Agreed with the comment above, the small shark fin in red may look better.
    Nice attempt to disguise the halo and all teams will probably do the same. I will save my opinion on that until seeing them in the flesh in Melbourne.

    I hope Haas have a better year this year as it can only improve the chances of new teams looking to enter F1 if they can see a new team like Haas can be competitive in the mid field.

  34. The car looks great, simple as that.

  35. califormula1fan
    15th February 2018, 8:05

    The halo is there for one purpose: to protect the FIA and F1’s bottom line. In today’s over-litigated world, climbing into a Formula 1 racecar is not consent to accept the known risks. While drivers may be daredevils, their estates will seek every opportunity to find compensation for tragedy. Once the league had the data that the halo made the driver safer; there was no recourse but to implement it.

    I think it’s a tragedy, and it will be a long, long time before it produces a positive result and saves a life. Too bad.

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