Gene Haas has made a rather bold claim, believing his outfit’s chassis is “probably a better design” than Ferrari’s 2016 offering, which is likley to challenge Mercedes going by their 2015 form.
Whilst Haas admitted many of their components will come from Ferrari because of their technical partnership, the chassis – a joint project between Dallara and Haas – will employ a different approach to what Ferrari are doing which Haas reckons could result in a better outcome.
“A substantial amount of the engine, transmission, suspension will come from Ferrari,” he told Sky Sports. “But there’s still a lot left that we have to do.
“We’re doing our own CFD computer analysis on our own, we’re also working with Dallara on a lot of the analysis of the body structure, but we’re building those parts ourselves. And I don’t know why we can’t be as good as anybody else at that. We have some very bright people working at Kannapolis on the analysis of the chassis.
“I think our chassis is going to be substantially different in construction from the Ferrari one, because we’re just doing it separately. We think our chassis in some ways will be better than a Ferrari chassis because we’re using some more…I won’t say state of the art but we’re taking a different approach than Ferrari is and we think it’s probably a better design.”
He sees no reason why they can’t beat Ferrari at their own game and even reckons the Italian outfit could learn something from their approach.
“The Ferrari is more conventional, they’re going to stay with what they’ve been doing for a number of years. I think there could be some big differences there.
“Being a Ferrari ‘B’ team, I don’t think there’s any negativity in that at all because that’s obviously a sign of excellence, that we’re going to have some of the best equipment out there to compete with these teams. I don’t think we could beat them at that. Can we beat them at racing? I don’t know.
“I have to be honest with you, I don’t think Ferrari has held anything back; they’ve opened the doors and said ‘Here’s what we do, here’s how we do it. I guess if you can take our nuts and bolts and beat us then maybe we can learn something too’.”
