Haas officially presented their new chassis for the 2024 Formula 1 season ahead of the start of testing today.
The VF-24 is the first car produced by the team since Ayao Komatsu replaced Guenther Steiner as team principal last month. The change at the top resulted from Haas’ disappointment with its performance last year, when it slipped to last in the standings for the second time in three years.“The short-term objective really is to make incremental improvements,” said Komatsu of his first season in charge. “I believe we’ve got good ingredients, we’ve got good people in the team, just really focussed on making the team as one and making improvements.
“Our medium-term goal is put upgrades on the car that work, which hasn’t necessarily happened before, but I believe we can do it.”
He said the team’s priority during this week’s test is to investigate whether it has made any progress with the tyre degradation problems which dogged its 2023 campaign.
“Last year it was clear on Sunday we just couldn’t save tyres for 300 kilometres. So that’s what we are focussed on. Our Bahrain test programme is completely focussed on generating the relevant data so that our engineers can understand what’s happening to the car, what’s happening to the tyres, and then decide, if you’ve got good quality data and you can make a conclusion how to improve it, and then we decide the development direction of that.”
The team previously showed off their new livery in an online launch event last month. The VF-24 has already run in filming days at Silverstone and the Bahrain International Circuit, where three days of testing begins today.
Kevin Magnussen will be the first of the team’s drivers to appear in the car when the test begins. Team mate Nico Hulkenberg will take over in the afternoon.
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Pictures: 2024 Haas VF-24 launch
This article will be updated
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BasCB (@bascb)
21st February 2024, 12:50
It seems they forgot to tighten up some hose connections though and they are still slowest the first day of testing. But at least they did get to run for most of the time.