Haas has heaped praise on Nico Hulkenberg, believing his arrival at the team has facilitated better development, while also aiding team-mate Kevin Magnussen.
Formula 1 veteran Hulkenberg returned to the championship full-time in 2023, replacing Mick Schumacher, after spending the last three years in a reserve role at Aston Martin/Racing Point.
Haas holds seventh in the championship with the bulk of its points coming courtesy of Hulkenberg’s seventh place in the chaotic Australian GP.
The team has been a fixture of Formula 1’s midfield this season and have been buoyed by Hulkenberg’s presence.
“Nico has brought exactly what we were looking for,” said Haas’ Director of Engineering Ayao Komatsu.
“From Abu Dhabi testing, it was really clear that he can feel the car really well, so his feedback is very accurate, he’s very calm and he rarely makes mistakes.
“Even when things are less than ideal, he just stays calm in the car and gives you the feedback in real-time which doesn’t put engineers on edge, it means they can just focus.
“Whenever he’s running, we can get a decent amount of data and he is able to somehow comment on car behaviour in a way that engineers can relate to.
“He’s really accelerating our development and our set-up direction, and Kevin is benefitting from that as well.
“If you look at Monaco, okay – we weren’t competitive as a team – but if you look at both driver performances, they were nip and tuck in every session. They learn from each other and have different limitations which helps the other one, but the very fundamentals of the car, they are both clear about what we need to improve, which is exactly we needed.”
Haas has altered its development programme for 2023, opting to bring more regular upgrades, and Komatsu has been encouraged by the new components that have so far filtered through to the VF-23.
“The first major upgrade we brought to track in Miami, it just worked,” he said.
“It’s not as simple as saying coming from the wind tunnel, this is a big gain and this should work, which happens quite often and you don’t actually see it, but this one was the opposite – it didn’t make a huge difference in the wind tunnel in terms of headline numbers, but we believed it was worthwhile introducing it due to certain details we saw.
“At the track, we saw exactly the behaviour change we expected, and in fact, it was actually better than anticipated.
“Then, following that philosophy, we brought a front wing to Monaco which was meant for Imola, but in Monaco you can’t measure anything so we will measure it this week [in Spain]. Team morale-wise, it’s brilliant.”
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