Haas have revealed the first images of the design of its VF-22 chassis for the 2022 Formula 1 season.
The team released four images which it says shows “the design and livery of its brand-new VF-22 challenger”. Some details are likely to differ on the final design, but the model gives the most revealing representation yet of the radical new look of Formula 1 cars built to the new regulations for 2022.The team’s technical director Simone Resta said designing the car to F1’s drastically overhauled regulations for 2022 was “probably the most complex project” the team had undertaken since it entered the series in 2016.
“It’s a completely new set of regulations and this season we’ve brought in a new team to manage the creation of the VF-22. Not everyone is new but a good chunk of people have joined with a revised structure now in place.
“I consider this as a great success in the process. We’re still early in the project and going through a transitional season of working together on a car for a full year, but if we look back where we started, this team is already a success.”
The team finished last in the constructors’ championship – the only team to fail to score points – after Haas announced prior to last season that they would forgo all development work on their 2021 car in order to focus on their chassis for the 2022 season.
“We made the decision back in 2020 to really channel time and resources into the VF-22, foregoing anything track-related for 2021, which wasn’t easy to watch,” said team principal Guenther Steiner. “Hopefully that decision bears fruit and we return to challenging for points and taking something from the weekends.”
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The car’s livery will again make heavy use of the white, red and blue colours of the Russian flag reflecting the nationality of the team’s title sponsor Uralkali.
Haas will field Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin as its drivers for a second season after the pair completed their rookie seasons with the team in 2021.
The opening pre-season test ahead of the 2022 season will take place over three days in Barcelona at the Circuit de Catalunya, beginning on Wednesday 23rd February. A second three day test in Bahrain will follow on the 10th-12th of March, ahead of the opening race of the season in the kingdom.
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2022 F1 season
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Proesterchen (@proesterchen)
4th February 2022, 11:03
And … it’s a Russian flag.
Quelle surprise!
JohnSt
4th February 2022, 11:44
So?
Todfod (@todfod)
4th February 2022, 13:23
I don’t think they’ll be doing the country very proud with the potential of Haas’ car + Mazepin’s stellar form.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
5th February 2022, 1:57
That is the least of my concerns.
How ugly is that? This gives 2014 cars a run for their money. Front wing, nose, and sidepods are horrendous.
Proesterchen (@proesterchen)
5th February 2022, 14:15
Well, yes, but that was always going to be the case with these sets of prescriptive rules.
Renee (@renee)
5th February 2022, 19:04
+1
StephenH
4th February 2022, 11:04
Like the way the ‘swoop‘ of the red/white/blue stripe follows the ground effect contours. Other than that, pretty average, even though it’s not the actual car.
Chris Horton
4th February 2022, 11:07
Wow.
Zafka (@jjlehto)
4th February 2022, 11:07
Last year’s toothpaste livery on the spec car… other than that, the nose seems a bit more different and I don’t see DRS
Coventry Climax
4th February 2022, 12:29
Don’t see DRS? Look again.
Arthur (@aegges66)
4th February 2022, 13:25
I don’t see it either. Which part of the rearwing will be moveable. It should be the uppermost part, but I cannot see how that part can move if I look at the rearview picture.
IsaacAndrews
4th February 2022, 15:19
@jjlehto maybe they know they won’t be within 1 second of a car ahead.
Manto
4th February 2022, 11:08
I see a Haas in this russian flag
OOliver
4th February 2022, 11:51
Every country has a flag. Every citizen deserve to have their flag.
What happened to banning or sanctioning a country’s sports administration. This issue of banning a flag is beyond comprehension and extremely political and unprecedented. Anyone who sings about a flag or no flag should be ashamed of themselves. F1 has no connection to the issue responsible for this.
Proesterchen (@proesterchen)
4th February 2022, 12:28
Guess what, when a country keeps trying to cheat everyone else over and over and over again, it doesn’t get to display its flag, or have its anthem played, or be associated in any other way with international sports events.
The part that is political about this ban is that it is merely a few years rather than permanent pending the full cooperation with international anti-doping agencies.
OOliver
4th February 2022, 13:57
Great. However I do find that a certain country participating in speed skating have almost all their athletes being asmatic.
OOliver
4th February 2022, 13:58
Asthmatic I meant.
Bradders (@bradders)
4th February 2022, 12:34
No.
It becomes political when a state-sponsored doping programme is undertaken. And rightly so.
MacLeod (@macleod)
4th February 2022, 13:20
A other penaulty was to ban all atletes from the offending country personally i find that a bit heavy because the atlete are not to blame the state was to blame here.
Bradders (@bradders)
4th February 2022, 13:35
They do get to compete, under a neutral/Olympic athlete banner.
Sergey Martyn
4th February 2022, 13:42
Very well said, sir.
I just can’t understand what these dimwits banning the flags and hymns are trying to achieve?
Everybody knows.
Mashiat (@mashiat)
4th February 2022, 11:11
Compare the images of the top of the car from this year to last year, the coke bottle is so much more compact. I guess by going down a different path to the split turbo, Ferrari has made a PU that’s extremely compact.
Srdjan Mandic (@srga91)
4th February 2022, 11:22
There were some rumors that this year’s Ferrari PU was ‘significantly’ lighter than last year and that it should require less cooling as well. Judging by the relatively slim sidepods on the 2nd picture, at least the latter part of that rumor seems to be true.
Mike
4th February 2022, 20:06
Seems Newey has managed to move the cockpit further forward on the RB18 and Honda have managed to make the engine even more compact and recouped the initial deficit from the new fuels.
Simon
4th February 2022, 11:14
I am whelmed, but only because expectations were so low there was no room to get under.
At least the lines look cleaner on the new shape car
Sam Crawford
4th February 2022, 11:15
Oh look, it’s a render of the spec car in Russian colours, no-one saw that coming!
thegamer23
4th February 2022, 13:01
Except this is not the spec car.
Darryn Smith (@darryn)
4th February 2022, 23:01
They really are going to all look the same. Too bad.
JL (@j-l)
4th February 2022, 11:20
Well, that was underwhelming..
Arnold Triyudho Wardono (@ernietheracefan)
4th February 2022, 11:24
Then the upgraded version should be called VF-22S..
Will Wood (@willwood)
4th February 2022, 17:34
@ernietheracefan Is that an anime reference?
Manmohan
5th February 2022, 20:22
The VF-22 Sturmvogel II is variable fighter featured in Macross 7 and subsequent Macross spinoffs.
Srdjan Mandic (@srga91)
4th February 2022, 11:28
It amuses me that people are already complaining about the livery/the car. I mean, what were you expecting?! Mazpein Sr. still sort of owns the team, with Uralkali being the title sponosr, and 1&1 are still sponsoring Mick Schumacher.
What were the chances they’d go for a fundamentally different livery?!
Btw, do you guys remember the livery on the Brawn GP in ’09? Not that spectacular either.
Simon
4th February 2022, 11:55
Fair comment, I think it’s just that they bothered to have a livery launch for what was (predictably) last year’s design
hahostolze (@hahostolze)
4th February 2022, 11:32
Can’t get used to how weird and fake that rear wing looks. Like a video game car from the early part of last decade.
Yaru (@yaru)
4th February 2022, 17:29
Rear wing is visually the best part of the design for me.
drmouse (@drmouse)
4th February 2022, 12:03
As one of my colleagues just said, that’s going to look nice sitting backwards in a run-off area!
sumedh
4th February 2022, 12:06
If such small side pods are required, why does the car become so fat in the middle? for the side impact structures?
MrBoerns (@mrboerns)
4th February 2022, 12:44
This is just a guess, but as it reaches the exact size of the floor in a single place, maybe there is a rule somewhere that the bodywork must be as wide as the floor?
Becken Lima (@becken-lima)
4th February 2022, 12:06
Very Indy.
BlueChris (@bluechris)
4th February 2022, 12:07
To me its beautifull, especially the 3 colors in the front wing .. i really like the simplicity of it.
Jere (@jerejj)
4th February 2022, 12:16
OK. The same livery as last season.
The car concept mightn’t necessarily be the ultimate one, so I’m more reserved on this front.
Roger Ayles (@roger-ayles)
4th February 2022, 12:25
If that is the actual Haas car then it just further shows how restrictive the new regulations are & is an early confirmation that F1 is turning into a pseudo spec series where all the cars may end up looking virtually identical.
Essentially a potential early confirmation of my fear regarding Liberty’s taking of F1 towards an Indycar+ pseudo spec series model.
Wrong direction! But then it’s all about artificial gimmicky show rather than the actual sport now because that’s all your average American cares about & why so many US ‘sports’ are full of such things. Liberty don’t get, Don’t want to get & don’t care about F1, It’s heritage, The sport or it’s fans. I think that is clear now.
MrBoerns (@mrboerns)
4th February 2022, 12:46
Yeah, i fear you might be right. Doesn’t sit right that the first look at a drastically new generation of F1 cars leaves you going ‘meh’.
On the other hand, Haas might just have gotten bamboozled by the other teams.
Stash (@stash)
4th February 2022, 13:01
Unless my eyes have been deceiving me best practice wins races and thus teams copy each others good ideas and thus they all look pretty much the same in the end. Rules and specifications. It’s only been now that teams have had to comply to specifications; ah no that’s not the case at all. Anyways moving on.
Roger Ayles (@roger-ayles)
4th February 2022, 13:39
@stash Cars looked similar in some ways but not identical as even if a team copied another’s concept it would never look totally identical.
I’d also say that a difference in the past was that teams taking design cues from each other & elements of the cars ending up looking similar was teams choice while now it’s more down to the over restrictiveness of the regulations which I fear will not only result in more identical looking cars than ever before but also far less room to come up with differing designs to make them look different.
To me that is a big issue as part of the allure of F1 for me, What makes it stand out above the rest, Part of the thing that hooked me in the 70s & has kept me hooked ever since is that side of the sport. The technical side, Watching cars develop, Watching teams innovate, Seeing cars that look different with teams developing them in different directions & adding new bits over a year & coming up with new ideas & concepts.
I have always & will always prefer a grid of varying design ideas & different looking cars over a grid of identical looking ones. That is why I watch F1 & have largely turned off everything else as they have gone towards been spec/single make categories. I just have little interest in watching those sorts of categories as I just find the lack of development & freedom to design or innovate to be quite boring.
I just hope things are not as bad as I fear they will be because if it does go psuedo-spec, over restrictive & does become the Indycar+ model I don’t think i’ll still be watching because it will mean that much of the things I enjoy will no longer exist to keep me hooked. That is my fear & nothing Liberty have said or done has calmed that fear, Simply solidified it.
Robbie (@robbie)
4th February 2022, 15:15
@roger-ayles Cars end up looking similar anyway just as they have in previous generations. There is the cost factor of opening up innovation. As well, the teams will draw the line when it becomes too spec for them and yet they have agreed these rules. Is it ideal? No. Would it be great if in reality we could have 10 or 12 teams that all have the types of unlimited funds the top teams have? Sure. That’s just not reality though. I’ll trust the teams to let Liberty and FIA know when it is so spec that they will be pulling out. For now, for me, this is just a new chapter in the history of F1, and I can’t wait, after decades of clean air dependent, not-meant-for-close-racing cars that have needed gimmick tires and drs to try to bandage over their inappropriate-for-racing design.
I get your point, and I’m not anti-innovation, and I think there is still plenty in F1, but I can’t go along with freedom to innovate when it means clean air dependent cars and years long stretches of predictable winners based on who has the most money and resources to innovate their way to the top, eroding any realistic hope for lesser resourced teams. Sure the odd time a lesser team will find an innovation themselves, but that is the exception. The first thing teams would do if innovation and freedom were opened up, is go back to trying to disrupt the air behind them to foil the trailing cars as much as possible. Time to try something different than what we have had for decades. Not to mention it has become crucial to the survival of the sport.
Michael A.
4th February 2022, 21:45
@roger-ayles – I agree with your comments. I remember being thrilled when I first saw photos in the 1950s of the Mercedes-Benz streamliners, the Lancia D50, the Connaught Syracuse and, most of all, those fantastic Vanwalls.
Today, not so much of a thrill factor here, plus we get to see so little of the internal parts of a Formula One car.
StefMeister (@stefmeister)
4th February 2022, 12:36
Is that the VF-22 or just the livery on the official F1 render?
If it is the VF-22 design then the fact it’s so similar to the F1 model does concern me a bit that maybe the regulations are more restrictive than I feared & that cars may well end up looking more similar to one another than I was hoping.
Have to wait until we see a few more to get a better idea.
Sam Crawford
4th February 2022, 12:45
I’m about 95% certain it’s just a spec render and the real car will look somewhat different, and I’d imagine all the launches will be like this, unless a team launches the car in the flesh (maybe McLaren?)
Then again Haas have the smallest budget, and maybe they used it all up just copy and pasting the spec design from the dummy car
StefMeister (@stefmeister)
4th February 2022, 12:45
On closer inspection i’m pretty sure it is the VF-22 as there are some differences to the F1 model.
The nose is a bit narrower, The air box is a different shape, The radiator openings are smaller & the sidepods are a little bulkier from the top.
Terence K
4th February 2022, 12:52
This is the actual new car and not the F1 render albeit they are probably not showing all their cards. Compare how small their sidepods are to the F1 render. Wing is less aggressive and nose is flatter with less of a bulb at the tip. Lots of differences from the F1 render if you look close enough.
petebaldwin (@)
4th February 2022, 13:14
@stefmeister – It’s not the official render. The sidepods are a different shape, the front win end plate is more boxy and so on. There are lots of subtle changes.
i wouldn’t worry to much at the moment as I would expect the teams at the back of the grid to be most similar to the mule car. They aren’t really in a position to try anything too drastic as they have less resources to throw at it – they’ll just want a strong base that works as they expect it to.
Denis (@denis1304)
4th February 2022, 12:46
Formula 1 should have copy right their mule car so teams wouldn’t be able to use it for this BS…
Yaru (@yaru)
4th February 2022, 17:31
You mean the cars the teams will be using to race? Those cars?
K (@sugoi)
4th February 2022, 12:50
A Russian flag on an american car. Well done.
Dane
4th February 2022, 12:55
Especially in the current political climate, that could turn really awkward in the months ahead.
JL (@j-l)
4th February 2022, 14:32
The only thing missing is the hammer and sickle.
Dane
4th February 2022, 12:54
That livery just screams “backmarker team”!
I really hope they can make a step up and challenge for some points. It’s was sad to see them turn into Minardi after such a promising beginning.
petebaldwin (@)
4th February 2022, 13:10
It’s obviously pretty basic but I imagine most of the cars will be at launch. They’ll start getting more and more complex throughout testing and into the new season.
From first impressions, it’s going to take a while to get used to the new rear wings and I really don’t like the shape of the front wing end plates. Overall though, I like the aesthetic of the new gen cars.
The slower teams were always going to look the most similar to the mule car as they just want a solid base to work from and getting off the back of the grid will be Haas’s goal. Whilst they obviously won’t show everything, it’ll be interesting to see the Red Bull as it’ll give us a better impression of how far from the mule car they can go with these rules.
Robbie (@robbie)
4th February 2022, 15:19
I’m seeing a message I haven’t seen before ‘Thank you for your feedback. We will look into it.’ If that means I tapped REPORT COMMENT, it was unintentional.
Dan Rooke (@geekzilla9000)
4th February 2022, 13:16
I really like it, it has a really clean look to it and lovely curves, it’s a very pleasant car to look at. I can’t wait to see the differences in regulation interpretation by the different teams.
theRealMax (@millionus)
4th February 2022, 17:43
@geekzilla9000 i would have to agree. If the Haas can look better than i was expecting then there is hope yet for the new cars I was thinking i’d hate. I guess seeing them in the flesh on the track is another thing though…
sumedh
4th February 2022, 13:45
I don’t understand the comments saying that it is similar to the Silverstone spec car. It is quite a whole lot different, the nose / front wing, side pods, for instance.
The rear looks similar and I suspect that will be the case aross cars. I feel the regulations are more tighter than elsewhere in the car. And that is understandably given that is the part of the car which eventually determines where the dirty air created by the car goes (whether it goes up or in the path of the following car). Hence, the regulators may have been more strict on the angles / number of surfaces used at the rear in order to ensure that the dirty air doesn’t inconvenience the following car.
PeterG
4th February 2022, 13:46
i’m a bit conflicted as while i don’t hate the look of the 2022 cars i just don’t think they really scream ‘f1’ anymore because the simplicity of them (and how similar they may all end up looking) just makes them look more like an indycar or some other lower category formula.
one of the things that has always made f1 stand out is how they looked so much more advanced & ‘extreme’ than anything else. you could never look at at f1 car and not be wowed by that or confuse it for a more junior formula.
one of the comments i’ve seen a lot going back to the initial concept unveiling was ‘it looks like an indycar’ and that is something i don’t see as a good thing because f1 should stand out, it should look like the pinnacle of the sport and if people think it looks like an indycar or that it looks too simple then it’s going to lose a bit of the hook.
Yaru (@yaru)
4th February 2022, 17:34
“Advanced” is subjective, I always thought the 2022 concepts look quite advanced and futuristic.
Sonny Crockett (@sonnycrockett)
4th February 2022, 15:15
Clearly they couldn’t be Haas’d changing the livery?
RandomMallard
4th February 2022, 18:05
COTD right here. Reminds me of Will Buxton’s old Haas puns on Paddock Pass
Don
4th February 2022, 15:33
Boring, too much white. The car looks ENORMOUS!
Qeki (@qeki)
4th February 2022, 20:06
It really looks like it could pull some train wagons
iCarbs (@icarby)
4th February 2022, 15:41
Well this is hilarious, i expect all the teams to follow suit and there will be *changes* between now and the first race.
Guess we’ll be waiting longer until we see the real cars….
Scotty (@rockonscotty)
4th February 2022, 15:51
@keithcollantine
Keith,
Any way to get the Haas car and the F1 demo car on a side by side slider so we can see the differences?
Qeki (@qeki)
4th February 2022, 20:08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPytuKo87W8&t=475s
Race did a good video where they show it
@rockonscotty
Scotty (@rockonscotty)
5th February 2022, 3:40
@qeki
Thankyou!
SpaFrancorchamps (@spafrancorchamps)
4th February 2022, 16:02
All the 2022 renderings looked awesome.. and now we’re getting… this?
Yaru (@yaru)
4th February 2022, 17:34
Yeah too similar to the old cars, boring.
RandomMallard
4th February 2022, 18:20
I don’t mind the livery. It actually grew on me quite a bit last season after I got over the err… novel colour scheme and its fairly obvious connotations. Last year at first, I joked it looked like a Sports Direct (I think a more UK-focussed reference, sorry international readers) car, but then realised I would much rather have a team sponsored by the Russian oil industry than Mike Ashley ;-)
My only complaint about the car would be the big patch of white on the engine cover between the “HAAS” logo and the “URALKALI” logo. Like if they can’t fill it with sponsors, can they at least fill it with something?
What I dislike is the thought process behind it. It screams lack of effort. It’s an almost identical design to last year. They had a completely new slate, and a brand new design of car, but they chose to just carry over the same design. Even keeping within the same colour scheme (for obvious reasons), surely there has got to be many other designs they could have chosen? I hope some of the other teams use the clean slate of the new generation to change things up a bit Especially looking at you Red Bull: as nice as that matte navy-red-yellow livery is, it’s been exactly the same since 2016. Even Ferrari are more imaginative than that.
I’ve seen a lot of people comparing it to the current Indycars. Personally, don’t see it that much, apart from maybe at the nose, although even that looks like (from some weirdly angled renders admittedly) it tappers down more that the Indy nose does, although as Steiner said earlier this is probably quite different to the car that will turn up in Barcelona/Bahrain. I do at least hope for a few different designs/philosophies over the next few weeks and months.
us-brian (@us-brian)
4th February 2022, 20:41
Horrible! The Cars need to be shorter. They are way too long. Plus, the usual rule circumvention buy saying its the livery not a flag.
VissileF1 (@mark-visser99)
5th February 2022, 1:22
So is this actually a rendering or is it pictures of the release car?
If it’s a rendering, then it seems like they’ve got a lot of extra capacity on their CFD computer systems, because it’s incredibly detailed….
davidhunter13 (@davidhunter13)
5th February 2022, 2:00
It’s a rendering. It’s really not that difficult to do these days. Look at all the people online posting their fake liveries with really highly detailed car models. Pretty simple these days.
RandomMallard
5th February 2022, 23:22
@mark-visser99 I don’t think the rendering is usually the problem. The thing that requires the power for CFD machines is, to my understanding, the actual simulation of the physics (airflow etc), which is incredibly detailed but as a result requires a lot of computing power. An actual rendering itself is fairly simple in comparison. In the semester terms, it’s “just a collection of shapes”; there’s not any mathematics/simulations being run with them. I mean it’s not a Word document, but at the same time you’re getting models like this in quite a few video games now and they don’t (usually) require supercomputers!
mmertens (@mmertens)
5th February 2022, 11:29
Will the rims for all cars be like these? They are horrible ! F2 ones were much better.
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
5th February 2022, 13:49
Wohoa. Much better looking than the renders.
Stil the car is quite to long. I wish it was 1m shorter.
RicoD (@ricod)
5th February 2022, 19:25
Still just renders, guys.
Just some rough indications of general shapes and proportions.
I’m not interested in liveries, so I will wait for more, and proper, reveals…