In the round-up: Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says the Eifel Grand Prix showed the strength of the team in adapting when the amount of pre-race practice is cut.
What they say
Just one hour of practice was held at the Nurburgring after local weather conditions forced the cancellation of Friday’s practice sessions:
I honestly think it doesn’t hurt us. And I think the guys can take some positives away from that, that just when we need to react quick and when we don’t have 100 people back at the factory – which we don’t have working on it – we are on par if not better than all the other ones.
I think the guys which are here can be proud of this, but I’m not jumping to a conclusion on this. Maybe it does, so hopefully we can pull the same thing off in Imola because there is only one practice session before qualifying.
Quotes: Dieter Rencken
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Links
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Comment of the day
@F1osaurus speaks up in favour of a power unit freeze:
I think it would make a whole lot of sense to freeze the engines until the next engine regulation kicks in.
There is not much point in spending hundreds of millions on those engines if nothing changes anyway. They did all the work and the current “powertrains” are clearly amazing.
The freeze worked perfectly fine with the V8s. Back then manufactures would be allowed to catch up if they actually had a proven deficit. Renault was allowed to make performance changes to catch up twice. So a locked in power disparity was not an issue back then either.
Although of course Red Bull was constantly spreading propaganda on how their Renault engine was producing 20bhp less than Mercedes trying to get even more privileges on improving the engine. In reality it was only 8bhp more than made up by the lower fuel consumption. But Red Bull will try to pull something like that whatever the status quo is. They always have a hot button topic that they are trying to get an advantage on.
@F1osaurus
Should Formula 1 freeze its power unit regulations as Red Bull have suggested? Join this week’s debate here:
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LB (@burden93)
19th October 2020, 0:35
Haas seem to have a good base setup, and lose ground with more running. Most years they’ve turned up with a good car at the start of the season and fail to improve it. The same at weekends, they run well in P1 then the pace falls away. The reduced running last weekend gave them the chance for points.
On a side note, I’ve read in a couple of places that George Russell may lose his Williams seat to Perez? I will be fuming if that happens
bookgrub (@bookgrub)
19th October 2020, 0:55
If the flip side to “we do as well as anyone with limited practice” is “we do worse than anyone with more practice” then that’s not exactly high praise for the team.
Patrick (@paeschli)
19th October 2020, 7:49
And Gasly to Renault. Silly season is pretty crazy this year.
Retired (@jeff1s)
19th October 2020, 8:33
F1 frog (@f1frog)
19th October 2020, 9:11
The only place where I’ve seen that is on Planet F1, which often comes up with fake news. (Gasly to Renault is also only on Planet F1), so I don’t think you need to get too worried.
F1 frog (@f1frog)
19th October 2020, 9:14
Racefans is probably the most reliable site for F1 news there is now, (along with Autosport), and I have seen nothing on those rumours on this site, so they are most likely false.
LB (@burden93)
19th October 2020, 10:16
Hopefully! Yeah, not seeing it on here has made me less worried. So often RaceFans have been first to report on a lot of the recent stories, which implies it isn’t true
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
19th October 2020, 11:04
Its total nonsense. They even kind of say it is just them speculating in their ‘report’ on Planet f1. They’re just saying Perez is sniffing around and if he ends up sniffing the Williams, he would replace Russell not Latifi, presumably as coffee boy is paying his way.
I personally think Russell is way over rated, he’s done nothing on raceday bar mess up 1 or 2 chances at points but that wasn’t their point, if they had one at all
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
19th October 2020, 12:37
All ferrari teams seem to get through fp1 reasonably well. On top of that Haas car has a year of Ferrari data as well. I’m assuming haas form has to do with engine mapping, either it is pretty spot on in fp1 or ferrari does not evolve it as well as others.
Jack (@jt1234)
19th October 2020, 0:51
It seems practice does not help Haas, practice does not make perfect.
Tommy C (@tommy-c)
19th October 2020, 1:54
Hard to believe, but I think that’s meant to say 35 years since Nige won in South Africa…
@HoHum (@hohum)
19th October 2020, 2:11
I think you are right, 1995 was post apartheid S.Africa, apart from the obvious disparity in car design and the Mansell era when Williams was a winning team.
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
19th October 2020, 2:47
If not practicing doesn’t hurt you then you’re doing something wrong. Kevin and Romain achieved places 15 and 16 in Q1 respectively at the Eifel GP. Kimi aside, the drivers they beat were more or less what I’d expect them to beat.
Todfod (@todfod)
19th October 2020, 6:41
I don’t think practice really helps them because they’re quite clueless on how to find a good set up… which is kind of expected considering they don’t even design their own chassis. It’s obvious they’ll be more competitive when other teams don’t run on Fridays as it’s a bit unknown for every team that weekend… they all get dropped to Haas’ levels of preparation.
LosD (@losd)
19th October 2020, 9:09
That’s quite an odd statement. Not producing own their own chassis hasn’t stopped competitors in almost every other racing series than F1 from finding good setup.
Quite the opposite, when there isn’t much development, it should be quite a bit easier.
… Not that it has helped Haas.
Todfod (@todfod)
20th October 2020, 8:08
@losd
But this is F1. It’s the highest level of engineering and attention to detail in any motorsport.
A team that sources most of it’s parts from Ferrari and the rest designed by Dallara can never have the level of expertise at maximising the potential of the car as a team that actually conceptualises it’s own machine.
LosD (@losd)
20th October 2020, 11:45
@todfod I don’t really believe that. Sure, the chassis itself could be improved from feedback (and that’s at a much better reaction time and frequency with in-house production), but in terms of setting up what you have gotten, being the producer wont help you much. You learn how the chassis works in testing and especially on track (as most teams has learned the hard way again and again).
Not sure that I really agree with it, but Racing Point is also considered by many not having done much themselves in terms of concept and philosophy of the car, and they seem to have no such setup issues.
Todfod (@todfod)
22nd October 2020, 13:35
@losd
Racing point has designed it’s own cars for years. They have the expertise in house of understanding the designs of different parts of car and how to maximise it. They’ve not inherited a Mercedes car and they have the expertise in getting the most out of it. Haas never had that talent in house.. almost every function has been outsourced. Clearly their team is not strong enough in anything to do with maximising the car’s potential.
Todfod (@todfod)
22nd October 2020, 13:44
*They’ve inherited
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
19th October 2020, 11:06
Totally agree, the less everyone has time to perfect the set up, the closer they are to Haas never having any understanding of how to set up
franco
19th October 2020, 7:15
Cotd: A lot of people seem to hate that term ‘freeze’ but I wouldn’t mind some sort of monitoring and control on engine performance, or any performance. What do I care that some manufacturer has done a way better job? We’ve sort of noticed that for a while now.
I know this is not a spec series but it is also entertainment, otherwise we might as well not race and compare dino and windtunnel data and declare someone a winner. A little bit of tweeking behind the scenes wouldn’t hurt no one.
petebaldwin (@)
19th October 2020, 13:21
I don’t think you need to freeze engines etc – you just need to force suppliers to name a price for a part and make them available for any team to buy. If a team wants to buy that part, they can at the listed price.
That way, you keep the innovation because the manufacturers will want to run and sell their own engines but you get around this situation of manufacturers refusing to sell their engines to certain teams.
Jere (@jerejj)
19th October 2020, 7:57
LOL.
formevic (@formevic)
20th October 2020, 7:20
Yeah it’s well noted Haas do better without practicing, where the surprises? Their people doesn’t come from motorsport but from bakeries and farms. What’s a set-up? We don’t need it, we dress tyres on car and go as fast we can.