Haas VF22 rendering, 2022

New Haas car will look “a little bit different” in testing – Steiner

2022 F1 season

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Haas’s new car for the 2022 Formula 1 season will not look exactly the same as the renderings they revealed on Friday, team principal Guenther Steiner confirmed.

The images of the VF-22 presented today are understood to reflect the car at an earlier stage in its design process. Testing will begin at the Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona on February 23rd.

“I think how different it looks in Barcelona you will see in two weeks,” said Steiner. “It will be a little bit different, obviously. We are not saying now that it is exactly the same.”

The renderings revealed today represent “a stage of development”, said Steiner. “We don’t want to define it but it’s going in that direction.”

However he said the car which runs in testing will bear a close resemblance to that used for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix next month. “In the moment between the test and the race we will not have a lot of changes planned for the moment.”

Steiner said he is prepared for a trickier start to testing with the new car given how significant the change in design is from last year’s VF-21.

“It’s a complete new car,” he said. “It’s always exciting when you go out the first time, where will the gremlins be?

“Last year obviously we had a carry-over car and there is a lot less gremlins in a carry-over than a complete new car. So the expectation is to go out there and do solid laps. That is the first expectation because if you are reliable and you can get going, you learn a lot, you can develop, you can get data so you can get the best set-up for the first race on the car and just do a a good session.”

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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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17 comments on “New Haas car will look “a little bit different” in testing – Steiner”

  1. Look at those sidepod air intakes! It’s a million miles away from the FIA’s rendition of what that area will look like.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if the cars look different from how the FIA imagined they would.

    1. Exactly! Not only are the sidepod air intakes smaller than on the FIA’s concept car, but also narrower than on the Haas or Ferrari from last year.
      Perhaps that has something to do with the new Ferrari PU requiring less cooling the last year’s model.
      The cars are definitely going to look different from what the FIA had in mind. Front wing, nose and sidepods already look vastly different on the Haas.

      1. *than last year’s model
        Damn it, Keith! When will you introduce a editing buttion :(

    2. @todfod I wouldn’t be surprised if the airpod intakes look nothing like that at some points during the season. Sidepod intakes usually change quite a bit from race-to-race and track-to-track, because different cooling requirements have to be taken into account. You’ve got to carefully manage drag vs cooling (a big example of this not being managed well was Mercedes in Austria in 2019), and the side intakes are one of the easiest places to change (or at least were under the old regs, idk now) to manage this afaik. I think the lack of bodywork in front of the sidepods is really making them stick out more than they have in previous years though.

      Please note this is all me speculating though, I can’t confirm anything of course

  2. Then what was the point in showing us the renderings you ####!

    1. The same as everyone will do. Give a realistic impression of the new car.
      Not one team will show the real deal already.

      1. @nullapax Perhaps Haas just wanted a bit of extra marketing attention by being the first to reveal something while we all wait so anxiously to see the cars and get this season under way.

      2. Indeed @robbie, I agree with erikje @nullapax and personally I like that both before and now they were clear about it being a look at the livery, and an approximation of what it would look like on the track, but no pretense at it being a full ‘launch’.

        Anyway, it already shows a few differences from the FIA models, so it did more than I expected, the advantage of setting expectations low by the team and myself, so now I am feeling positive about this one.

    2. petebaldwin (@)
      4th February 2022, 14:42

      @nullapax – They are the first team to show us a 2022 car so their sponsor logos will be prominantly featured on every F1 site around the world. It’s free publicity so why not do it?

      1. @petebaldwin and @robbie (for your comment above)

        I seem to remember Haas have a bit of a reputation for doing this. They often seem to be one of the first teams to launch (last year and possibly 2019 – with Rich Energy and their big corporate event in London, though even that may have had some early release/renderings, I can’t remember – being the exceptions iirc), and always announce it very close to that launch date. As you say, generate that extra publicity by being first. And it seems to be successful enough that they keep doing it as well

  3. I feel all these car launches nowadays are rather pointless. For years I’ve wondered why they don’t just do a launch event for all teams on the eve of the first test, televised, where all teams launch their cars with how they will look on track 24 hours later. I’m sure it would be a nice little earner too and set up the season nicely.

  4. I’m sure Mazepin will provide a few 360 degree views of it on the track, along with demonstrating it’s structural integrity…

    1. Mazepin may have got the name. But Mick has the reputation.

  5. I have the same question as someone else in the other post about this reveal…where is the DRS? The rear wing appears to be fixed with the side uprights solidly connected to the main and secondary planes without any visible mechanism to lift the main plane. What am I missing, is the mechanism inside the side uprights or is DRS rules removed for this year?

    I’m not a fan of DRS in any form, if it is removed, I would welcome this whole hardheartedly!

  6. Launch spec cars never look like cars in testing or the first race and the keep changing during the year. That’s just the nature of the sport, development never stops. Cars aren’t even the same between P1 and Q1 if you’ve got a sharp enough eye.

    1. those sidepods are freakishly small though

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