Kevin Magnussen has challenged Haas to “break the status quo” with the team’s 2024 Formula 1 car as it bids to recover from dropping to the bottom of the standings last year.
After a challenging 2021 campaign, Haas had capitalised on an overhaul to the F1 technical regulations the following year to become a regular points contender again.
But the Kannapolis-based squad’s performance nosedived in the second year running the latest ground effect machines, accruing only 12 points from the 22 rounds.
Despite introducing a seismic upgrade package in Austin converging on the downwash sidepod solution, Haas’ troubles persisted through the year’s closing events.
With ex-boss Guenther Steiner believing it could top the midfield in the upcoming campaign, Magnussen has noted how Haas utilised last season to break with tradition.
“This year, we haven’t been able to find better performance even on the drawing board, so we need to break that,” Magnussen said.
“Things are looking better back at the factory, and we kind of broke that status quo that we had for too big a part of the season.”
Aside from being limited by an aerodynamic concept that had hit a development ceiling, Haas was consistently thwarted by severe tyre degradation concerns in race trim.
But Magnussen admits that regular flashes of promise in qualifying provided some light for the American outfit as it demonstrated that the underlying performance is there.
“The thing is we will show flashes of very good performance, so it’s not just a flatline of poor performance all the time. But it’s way too much poor performance,” he added.
“There’s potential in there and that’s the motivational thing. At same time it’s frustrating because we can’t seem to hit consistency with our top-level performance.
“But also motivating at the same time, because you can see there is some performance in there that we just can’t seem to unlock properly.”
Haas team-mate Nico Hulkenberg elected to revert to the old-spec car for the final two rounds, citing that he felt more comfortable pushing the limits with that specific package.
“It was interesting to split the cars, I didn’t think so much about which one was faster. I really wanted to compare and I think Nico was quite keen to run the old spec, so I think we had a different perspective on things,” Magnussen explained.
“Not that I didn’t care whether I got the faster or the slow car, I was more interested in just seeing the difference.”
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