Haas team principal Guenther Steiner admits they reacted too slowly after the upgrade they introduced at the Spanish Grand Prix did not produce the gains they hoped for.
The new aerodynamic package remained on the car for several races until the team reintroduced its original specification on Romain Grosjean’s car at the Austrian Grand Prix. This gave more positive results, and the team moved away from its new aerodynamic package over the following races.Steiner said the team should have paid more attention to the feedback from their drivers, who raised concerns over the Spanish GP upgrade.
“One thing I would do [differently] is to just do something different after we introduced the upgrade in Barcelona,” he said. “I would listen a little bit more to the drivers and be a little bit more self-critical.”
The team has slumped from fifth place in the championship this year to ninth. Steiner said the opportunity to learn from the mistakes it has made this year in designing its car for the 2020 F1 season has been a “silver lining” for Haas.
“Yes, I would say there is a silver lining. We started to react during the summer break to work on the 2020 car – to try to avoid the mistakes we’ve made this year. We don’t want to repeat them. We’re just moving forward, analyzing and working hard on the 2020 car.”
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Optimaximal (@optimaximal)
25th November 2019, 10:18
This continues to highlight a fundamental flaw in the Haas model. Every year they’ve arrived in Australia with a good enough car because they’ve spent months developing it and then struggled massively to develop it. The only consistently good year (2018) was when they arrived with effectively the Ferrari 2017 car with tweaks.
We know they sub-contract all their build work to Dallara, who just build what Haas tell them to do as a result of their aero analysis. Because this work has to fit in with Dallara’s other work, my guess is they just lack the business agility to pull or change the production schedules in reaction to a bad update or decision made months earlier.
allstargp
25th November 2019, 11:18
Completely agree. There is clearly something wrong with the in-season operations at that team. It sounds like it’s a manpower issue rather than logistics and strategy one (see Williams).
BasCB (@bascb)
25th November 2019, 12:02
I think you are right about that flaw @optimaximal. However, I am not sure this has much to do with the logistics/manufacturing (although that would certainly make it harder to react quickly) but rather that getting so much stuff from outside – Ferrari – makes it harder for them to understand the whole package, since they weren’t “in the loop” for all of it’s development.
Optimaximal (@optimaximal)
25th November 2019, 13:40
@bascb Surely most of the standard parts from Ferrari/others would not be changing much in-season and their designs would have been agreed in advance of the season and baked into the initial model design, which explains why they’re good out of the starter gate?
Their performance always stagnates/collapses when they’re required to introduce the ‘spec 2’ car around Barcelona, apart from 2018, where the similarity to the SF70H was under scrutiny, meaning they couldn’t realistically attempt that trick again.
BasCB (@bascb)
25th November 2019, 20:43
It’s not about those parts being developed, so much as rather about developing the car further themselves, after they get the “original” package done with Ferrari over the winter @optimaximal.
That first update package is more or less what teams change after their experience from testing and possibly the first race – most of the time between the first race and barcelona would go towards signing off designs, manufacturing and logistics.
socksolid (@socksolid)
25th November 2019, 13:58
There is the business agility and then there is the extra money haas would need to pay to dallara to sort it out. Was haas willing to spend that money? Did it really fail because dallara did not just have enough time to get it done or was it haas not willing to pay enough to figure out the problem and solve it?
Optimaximal (@optimaximal)
25th November 2019, 14:37
@socksolid Probably both. The fact they’re contracting everything out means they will never really develop the breadth of experience to resolve this either.
Seems like a very US-centric way of dealing with business. :D
Tango (@tango)
25th November 2019, 12:14
I surprised it took time to listen to their drivers. It’s not like Mag or Gro are easy guys to ignore. Might explain why they kept the pair onboard though.
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
25th November 2019, 16:33
Strangely enough, history records the Spanish GP as Haas’ second best result of the season (up to now). Kevin left Barcelona with 7 points and Romain with 1 point. Maybe the upgrade was removed for the race, or maybe it was only fitted to one car, but if the upgrade was fitted to both cars then the results don’t seem to suggest the upgrade was flawed.
Tango (@tango)
25th November 2019, 16:51
It might explain the error. Drivers say it’s bad, results say otherwise -> ignore drivers.
BasCB (@bascb)
25th November 2019, 20:46
As @tango mentions, that was a big part of what turned Haas into a dead end @drycrust – the drivers told them they didn’t like the package, but it seemed to deliver (see results), so the team went on with the package and invested more parts into it.
Only races later, after having Grosjean do solidly with the older spec, they were ready to admit having gone wrong. By then there wasn’t much left to do, but learn from mistakes to avoid them for next year.