Guenther Steiner feels that the tyre management for Haas F1 Team is going in the right direction for 2020 with VF-20 after the troubles in 2019.
As teams up and down the F1 paddock assess the performances of their respective 2020 cars in this year’s winter testing at Barcelona, Haas’ Steiner has evaluated the VF20, and particularly the improvements made on it versus last year’s car.
One area where the VF19 struggled massively was downforce, and subsequently, getting the tyres to work due bad upgrades. Such issues were seen at races like Austria, where the American outfit were quick on short runs, but struggled on those of a longer nature.
However, Steiner is hopeful that the VF20 has ameliorated these issues, even though he admitted that comparisons are difficult to make at this early stage. “We don’t have a 2019 car here, so we cannot compare them but 2ithout joking, it’s difficult to compare because the car is different but it seems to be a lot more manageable [with] tyres with this car.
“Again, we need to go through the data to see what did what, because we started slower, we started fast, and now we just need to analyze, but it seems to be a lot more — you can manage it better. I think we have improved it. I don’t know if you can eliminate not the aero problem, but the management of the tyres.
“You can’t eliminate it completely because you always have to manage the tyres, and it wouldn’t be easier this year because all the cars improved, I’d say. So the tyre is more stressed out, and overheating will be an issue. It’s just how we manage it, but it seems like we can manage it better.
“It’s going in the right direction, and it’s more stable, but how competitive it is, I don’t know,” summed up Steiner. Throughout the end of 2019 and in the winter, Haas has been working on solving the issues they had.
Even though Haas did not run much miles at Barcelona, Steiner was satisfied with the VF-20’s potential but diplomatically left it for Australia to understand the real value. “I am happy because you always want to be better, when you come here and you go out there, and every time you see you want to do it better, unless you’re happy you’re behind.
“In general, it looks like we made a good step forward, but we need more. All-day long. In terms of where we are, honestly I don’t [know], because I still don’t know the engine modes, [I] cannot know the engine modes, the fuel, everything gets closer together as you can see on the timesheet, if you analyse what time people did their lap times on what tyre.
“It’s very close together. I have no idea where we stand. I would like to know. It’s a lot of guesswork going on, and I could stand here and talk an hour, and you would be as wise as before, because they’re so low in content. I’ll wait a little bit longer,” summed up Steiner.
Finally, Steiner touched upon what surprised him most in the two weeks of testing. Here, he chose the reliability of the cars on the grid, which has been outstanding thus far, with limited retirements. “How reliable the cars are,” he said. “I was very surprised.
“I mean look at it, it’s amazing how few red flags we’ve had here. The reliability, and if you look at the laps run in the six days, I’m sure we are close to what we did last year with eight days. I didn’t do the counting but it’s amazing how many laps we can do now.”
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The story was edited by Darshan Chokhani
