It’s sometimes easy to forget that Haas are in only their second season in Formula 1. Having come in just ahead of a huge regulation change, the team did well to come into 2017 with a reliable and fairly quick package at the start of the season, although their pace has started to tail off lately.
Developments have been steady to say the least. While Ferrari will continue to supply them with engines, gearboxes, electronics and suspension components for the foreseeable future, working alongside Dallara on the chassis has its drawbacks – the lower complexity of their bodywork relative to their midfield rivals demonstrates limited manufacturing techniques, so updates must be planned with plenty of lead time and with the assurance that they will perform as expected.
For their home race in America the VF-17 received some tidy modifications across the car. Rather than producing totally new components from scratch, these tweaks bring down costs while the 2018 project begins to gather momentum.
The most visual change was to the sidepod deflectors that straddle the car (yellow). This area has been a heavily invested in by everyone this year as there is a lot more freedom to extend bodywork forward into the front tyre wake and divert it away from useful laminar flow.
Haas have come up with a neat solution that is both lightweight and low-drag by adding five long horizontal louvres to their existing setup, intersected by a vertical strut – that acts as a turning vane – connected to the bargeboard below.
The bargeboard has also seen some treatment. Previously the footplate only played host to a smaller secondary bargeboard, but this has now been divided up into small ‘teeth’ at the leading edge (red arrows).
Plenty of teams have gone for a similar design here to generate small vortices, creating a seal from unsteady flow around the floor and enhancing the performance of it and the diffuser behind.
The same effects can also be said of their revised scallop slots in the floor ahead of the rear tyre, which help seal the sides of the diffuser from turbulence projected sideways off the tyre sidewall (offen referred to as ‘tyre squirt’).
