Haas is said to be encouraged by what its Head of Aerodynamics calls a “massive boost” in its car development with the new Formula 1 season just weeks away.
The American outfit, fresh from other recent good news that it has hit the cost cap for the first time, has spent the off-season trying to ensure the VF-25 challenger is an improvement on its predecessor, which narrowly missed-out on sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship last season.
The team’s new Head of Aerodynamics, Davide Paganelli, has said that the bulk of the concentration on development has been the rear end of the car.
Paganelli, who is based in Fiorano, on secondment from Ferrari – as per its partnership with the Italian marque – has indicated the initial prognosis on the car looks promising.
“With the help of the performance team, we tried to work on the whole car as a package to be able to solve the issue,” he said.
“An indication of this is that we worked a lot on the rear of the car, and particularly the rear wing. I think that we’ve done a really good job on this for 2025.
“We believe the package we’ve designed is a really good one in terms of development. Obviously, we must check if the delivery is what we expect.
“If we’re able to see on track what we think we’re discovering in the wind tunnel, I think that we can have a massive boost from the very first race.”
Success on a breadth of tracks crucial to improvement on 2024 performance
Paganelli also explained further that Haas has tried to right one key issue from 2024, being that of lack of competitiveness on certain tracks.
“We’ve tried to design a car that can adapt to different races as one of the weaknesses we had last year was not being able to be able to perform at the same level at circuits with different characteristics,” he said.
“I think that we did a good job in trying to close this kind of gap as well as providing a configuration that is better in hotter races.
“We know at the beginning of the season we have some hot races, so we should be able to compete.”
The car has already seen track time, with Esteban Ocon being handed the reins for a shakedown run at Silverstone last week.
Both Ocon and Oliver Bearman, who complete a brand-new line-up for 2025, will put the car through more rigorous paces this week in Bahrain, with F1’s official pre-season testing programme taking place.
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