While Bahrain was still a positive surprise from Haas’s point of view, things seem to be back on familiar territory in Jeddah – at least on Thursday. In the free practice session in Saudi Arabia, Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hülkenberg only finished in positions 17 and 18, around 1.2 seconds behind the fastest of the day.
But both say that they haven’t been able to show everything that’s in the car over one lap. “The point is that not many people got their laps together 100 percent in the second practice – I certainly didn’t,” says Magnussen. “And hopefully I can do that in qualifying.”
“Because the whole field is so narrow, it’s important to do a good lap,” says the Dane, who admits that he still has a few more problems in the car with little fuel in the tank than with a lot of fuel. “But we are working on it and making progress.”
Hülkenberg also says that he “didn’t have the cleanest run” on the soft tire. “I only had one lap and then I don’t know, I had a bad position on the track and we didn’t have a second lap.”
That’s why the German knows that there would have been more in the car. “But maybe everyone can say that – definitely.”
Haas took a different approach in training on Thursday. The team was the only racing team other than the Racing Bulls not to use soft tires in the first training session.
Focusing on their weak point, long runs, is nothing new for the team this year, but Hülkenberg says it was more about saving the maximum number of soft tires for qualifying. Because you want to get as far as possible there again.
“There’s still room for improvement” at Haas
“But I think we still have work to do and there is still room for improvement. We have to sort out a few things and then it should be fine,” he says. “But it will be very, very close again between many teams.”
Jeddah is again a new challenge for Haas because the course has completely different requirements than Bahrain, where all official kilometers were previously driven this season.
“In Saudi Arabia we have a different level of downforce and a different cornering speed, so we expected a different challenge,” says team boss Ayao Komatsu. “The day went more or less as expected. I think we have decent speed on the straights, we struggled a little in the high-speed corners, but the tires are working well.”
Improved more in low speed than in high speed
According to Magnussen, Haas improved the car primarily in the slow corners, but not in the fast corners. This means that Bahrain should actually suit the car a little better than Saudi Arabia, where there are a lot of fast corners. “That’s probably where we still need to improve the most,” says the Dane.
“But low speed is very useful because even a little bit more performance can get a lot of lap time,” he says. “That’s just how it works. One kilometer is more effective there than 300 or 200. So it’s the right direction, but we have to find more.”
Team boss Komatsu looks ahead: “As you can see, the midfield is very close together and I think qualifying will be quite a challenge. We have to give it our all, but with the temperatures and everything else it’s not easy – it is very close,” said the Japanese.
“What’s encouraging is that Kevin’s high fuel run in FT2 was really good, so that’s a good basis. I think if we can qualify in a good position we’ll have good race pace.”