Romain Grosjean will continue to drive Haas’s car in its four-month-old specification at this weekend’s German Grand Prix while his team mate races an updated version of the car.
Haas will continue the practice is began at Silverstone, where Grosjean reverted to an Australia-spec VF-19 so the team could compare the performance of both versions in a bid to understand why it has been unable to make its tyres work properly.The team was unable to gather all the data it wanted as the two drivers collided on the first lap of the race, forcing both to retire. “We got four turns [of data],” team principal Guenther Steiner said afterwards. “That will not help a lot.”
Kevin Magnussen will therefore test further new updates for the current specification car this weekend while Grosjean continues with the old car.
“We decided on this exercise to get data and understand better what the difference between the two cars is, good or bad, then we can see where we can make improvements,” Steiner explained.
“We weren’t sure if the update we introduced in Barcelona was better or not. We’re running this again in Hockenheim, which is a different type of track with different temperatures – they’ll be a lot higher – and, as we all know, we couldn’t get a lot of data from the race at Silverstone from either of the cars.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
2019 F1 season
- Crying in the Melbourne car park at 2019 grand prix was my career low – Ocon
- McLaren Racing reports reduced £71 million loss in 2019
- Kvyat: Hockenheim podium last year was “my biggest achievement” so far
- How the FIA’s new encrypted fuel flow meter targets Ferrari’s suspected ‘aliasing’ trick
- “He smashed my office door”: 23 must-see moments from ‘Drive to Survive’ season two
Joao (@johnmilk)
22nd July 2019, 12:17
they really have to don’t they? Because they didn’t take part in the race, so they have to redo the work all over again
georgeboole (@)
22nd July 2019, 12:44
@johnmilk they probably do. They need the data.
Will it still be Rich energy or is it just for the old spec? (couldn’t stop myself…)
Hugh (@hugh11)
22nd July 2019, 13:14
And the funniest thing is that they didn’t take part in the race because they hit each other. Haas this year really is an absolute disaster zone.
erikje
22nd July 2019, 17:01
It’s a team with a very small budget that’s struggling a lot. Give then some slack!
Ninjenius (@ninjenius)
22nd July 2019, 12:45
Reckon they should just about have they data they need by the time we get to Abu Dhabi.
Mark (@blueruck)
22nd July 2019, 13:57
After 2018 I thought 2019 was going to be an amazing year for them – it must be frustrating as hell for the team – your drivers keep hitting each other, the car qualifies good and goes backwards or it qualifies bad & then goes backwards.
Is Haas the next to go through a multi-year period where nothing works right?
nase
22nd July 2019, 14:04
Knowing their luck, Hockenheim’s probably going to be a complete washout which yields zéro meaningful data.
The current weather forecast is a bit like that: Scorching heat on Friday (at least 30°C during the morning session, up to 38°C in the afternoon – expect track temperatures to climb up to 55-60°C), significant risk of rain on Saturday (22-25°C – that setup which sort of worked on Friday? It’s not worth a straw now …). Sunday could be either or a mixture of both. Still too early to tell.
But I digress.
The situation at Haas is like watching a massive volcano erupt. Deep down inside, you know people are suffering because of it, but it’s so entertaining you wish it could keep going like that.
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
22nd July 2019, 18:46
I think they should replace the gearbox on their lowest Qualifying car simply to add a few extra spaces between them.
slowmo (@slowmo)
22nd July 2019, 23:56
Provided they can of course qualify out of Q1.
ram
22nd July 2019, 18:51
It would be Great to have 2 new-spec Drivers.
schooner (@schooner)
22nd July 2019, 20:49
This time last year Haas were sitting in 5th place with 51 points. Currently they have 16 points, ahead of only Williams. Yikes. At least the grumbling about their business model and ersatz Ferrari seems to have died off … for now.
Fast (@fast)
23rd July 2019, 0:32
@keithcollantine – gee whiz, wasn’t Grosjean being replaced?
BeyondTheFlag iphone news feed is still reporting that Ocon will take his place for this year & Fittipaldi next?
Thank you again and as always RaceFans for telling like it really is!!
nase
23rd July 2019, 10:00
@fast
Short answer: No.
Lang answer: Also no.
It was just some guy on Reddit who claimed that, end of story (thus far).
Here‘s an article from the front page of this very side that sums it up (unfortunately wasting a good opportunity to analyse how the relationship between F1 and fake news is basically the same as between a Victorian era brothel and syphilis).
nase
23rd July 2019, 10:01
lang = long
side = site
lack of an edit function = source of continuous annoyance
nase
23rd July 2019, 10:28
Also: Not understanding sarcasm before it’s too late = embarrassing. :(