Haas team boss Guenther Steiner doesn't believe the 2019 cars will be "a lot slower" than the current generation, despite predictions they will be on average 1.5 seconds slower a lap.
The sport passed regulations for next season which are aimed at making overtaking easier. To achieve this the front-wings will be far less complex and lower, wider rear-wings will be introduced to reduce outwash potential – also known as 'dirty air'.
FIA Formula 1 Head of Technical Matters Nikolas Tombazis admitted this would likely reverse some of the recent moves to increase the speed of the cars, but Steiner doesn't reckon this will be the case, at least not as dramatically as some have forecast.
"We’ve had to do a lot of studies with the new regulations," he revealed. "It’s just the details getting sorted out at the moment.
"The jury’s still out on how big the change is. There was speculation the cars would be a lot slower, but I don’t believe that one. There are a lot of intelligent engineers working on it, and we will find a way around it to make the new regulations work as well as the old ones, and have a very similar speed to what we have this year."
Although Steiner says the changes are small, he says it will force Haas to switch focus earlier than they would have liked.
"For sure, it will trigger that we switch over to the 2019 car a little bit earlier than we envisioned at the beginning of the year, but so will everyone else.
"It’s not a big change. For the aerodynamic engineers, it’s a good challenge. The exact date when we switch over, we don’t know yet."
