German Grand Prix Preview: Time for Hockenheim
July 22, 2019
KANNAPOLIS, North Carolina (July 22, 2019) – For Rich Energy Haas F1 Team, there’s no better time to be heading to Hockenheim for the German Grand Prix. Sunday’s 67-lap race around the 4.574-kilometer (2.842-mile), 17-turn Hockenheimring marks the halfway point in the 2019 FIA Formula One World Championship, and just as it serves as the keystone of this year’s campaign, the track itself balances the low drag and top-end speed needed for the sequence of fast straights in the first half of the lap with good traction and the necessary downforce for the turn-six hairpin and low-speed corners of the stadium section. This juxtaposition is a challenge for all teams, and it’s one Rich Energy Haas F1 Team embraces as it looks to get a better handle on its Haas VF-19s.
Qualifying and raw, single-lap pace have been the American team’s strong suit this season. In four of the previous 10 races, Rich Energy Haas F1 Team has been the quickest organization outside of the big-three teams of Mercedes, Scuderia Ferrari and Red Bull. Driver Kevin Magnussen has advanced to the final round of qualifying six times this season and teammate Romain Grosjean has been a part of Q3 three times. But qualifying pace has not transformed into race pace, with Rich Energy Haas F1 Team’s last points-paying result coming five races ago in the Monaco Grand Prix care of a 10th-place finish by Grosjean. This has dropped Rich Energy Haas F1 Team to ninth in the constructors’ standings, three points behind eighth-place Toro Rosso and 16 points ahead of last-place Williams.
While the results have not been there, the effort to score those coveted points has been prominent. Rich Energy Haas F1 Team debuted its first major upgrade in the May 12 Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona. It appeared to deliver as Magnussen finished seventh and Grosjean secured 10th to earn the team’s first double-points result of the season. And with Grosjean’s10th-place drive in the following race at Monaco, Rich Energy Haas F1 was a steady sixth in the constructors’ standings.
But perplexing performance issues in the following races in Canada, France and Austria – where single-lap pace couldn’t be carried to race pace – led the team to carry out significant car-to-car aero tests. In the recent British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Grosjean’s Haas VF-19 reverted to the aero spec it ran at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. Magnussen, meanwhile, carried on with the current spec. Good information was gleaned from Friday and Saturday’s on-track running, but the data collection was cut short following a double-DNF (Did Not Finish) early in the race. As a result, Grosjean will continue with the Melbourne aero spec in Germany. Magnussen, however, will debut the latest upgrade to the Haas VF-19, which was designed to improve downforce and the car’s overall driveability.
Running these dual aero specs allows Rich Energy Haas F1 Team to compare and contrast what they know works with what they believe will work better. And on a racetrack that highlights both straight-line speed and good traction, the Hockenheimring provides the ultimate laboratory.
Guenther Steiner, Team Principal, Rich Energy Haas F1 Team
Grosjean went back to the Melbourne aero spec at Silverstone and he’ll run it again at the Hockenheimring. What did the team learn from reverting back to that aero package and how did it compare to the aero spec featured on Magnussen’s car?
“We decided on this exercise to get data and understand better what the difference between the two cars is, good or bad, then we can see where we can make improvements. We weren’t sure if the update we introduced in Barcelona was better or not. We’re running this again in Hockenheim, which is a different type of track with different temperatures – they’ll be a lot higher – and, as we all know, we couldn’t get a lot of data from the race at Silverstone from either of the cars.”
When you run differing aero specs on the cars, does that add a new level of work for the crew and analysis for the engineers? More specifically, how do they compare and contrast the two setups to, ideally, find the best setup for the two cars?
“From a setup perspective, this is not a big issue. Each driver has their own engineers working on that. Mainly where it adds work is for the engineers back home who then have to compare data and make the car better. Setup work, it’s not a big difference. For sure, it doesn’t make things easier, but with the little bit more work that needs to be done, we can handle that.”
Another round of updates to the Haas VF-19 comes at Germany – its second major update since the Spanish Grand Prix in mid-May. What aspects of the car are being updated and is there a certain issue you’re looking to rectify with the update?
“We’ve changed a few parts on the car. There’s not one specific area we’re targeting. We’re just making the car, in general, better, more drivable with more downforce, which always helps you go fast. We’re trying to make the tires work better for us. That’s the biggest improvement we can make at the moment – getting into the window of the tire – and that’s got a lot to do with downforce.”
With back-to-back races in Germany and Hungary effectively concluding the first half of the 2019 season, how important is it to gain some momentum and a further understanding of recent issues before the FIA-mandated summer shutdown?
“We’re putting a lot of effort into improving the situation we’re in. We need to get the understanding of where we are and where we didn’t work in the right direction. That’s the thing we have to do.”
The subject of bringing back refueling during Formula One races has seemingly gained some more momentum as FIA president Jean Todt has recommended it as a way to potentially improve the racing. What are your thoughts on refueling and how would it affect a team’s logistics – from transporting equipment to having additional personnel as part of the pit stop?
“I find refueling very interesting. It could help the spectacle, but we need to be clever about it, not to just introduce more people to do the pit stops. Maybe we need to lose a few people on pit stops in general. So if you’re clever, we design some very simplistic equipment to refuel and don’t employ another five people to refuel. We just need to handle it properly to have more show, but not more cost.”