Haas boss Guenther Steiner has admitted his team is working to understand a “very weird” tyre trait on the VF-23.
Steiner has suggested his operation has a car capable of scoring points at every event this season, but it hasn’t recorded a top 10 finish since the Miami Grand Prix two events ago.
Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg battled through the Monaco Grand Prix, recording the team’s worst result of the year, before a Spanish GP weekend that was only marginally better.
“It seems like as we start to get in the middle of cars, or follow cars, we just have massive degradation and can never recover,” Steiner said.
“That is out problem, and I don’t know how we get out of it.
“The car on its own, or when it comes out on new tyres, is actually not slow, it’s just as soon as we get into traffic or something then it doesn’t come back.”
The problem points towards an aerodynamic issue given in clear air the problem doesn’t manifest itself.
It’s something the team has been battling all year, with Steiner admitting it the issue during the Bahrain Grand Prix at the start of the season.
There are also similarities to the team’s 2019 car which saw the squad poach points on occasion en route to ninth in the constructors’ championship.
“That was a little bit different, and I don’t want to go into any detail, but I think in ’19 we didn’t make any progress with the car aerodynamically,” he said.
“We did a lot of things but the car didn’t get quicker.
“This is something very, very weird.
“We need to understand why we kill the tyre in traffic.
“Obviously it’s not comfortable,” he added.
“It’s not like ‘oh yeah, we’re going to fix it, we’re going to do something’, it needs hard work, this one.”
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