There are only three races left in the F1 season.
While many things have remained the same since 2024, with Red Bull leading the constructors’ championship and Max Verstappen leading the drivers’ standings, recent events have shaken up the field a bit. Mercedes is struggling, McLaren is doing well and Ferrari is steadily closing the gap on Red Bull.
And a fascinating battle has begun in the midfield, with Visa Cash App RB F1 Team currently in the lead thanks to Yuki Tsunoda’s strong drive at the Australian Grand Prix.
With so much at stake and a short break until the Japanese Grand Prix, now is a good time to take stock of where each team is at the moment. But rather than a simple review, we’ll take a look at the biggest issues facing each team right now.
Yesterday, we looked at Alpine and asked how quickly a team in desperate need of progress could progress. He also asked if Sauber could solve the pitstop problems that have plagued them in the first three races of the season.
Where is your next destination? Hearth. The team finished in last place a season ago, but is already on track to match last year’s point total. Nico Hulkenberg scored a hard-fought point in Saudi Arabia as the team achieved a double points finish Down Under.
This brings us to a question that many people are currently asking.
Haas: Have they really solved the tire management problem?
Haas’ 2023 F1 season can probably be described as a “two-day story”.
On Saturday’s qualifying day, Haas was often right in the fight. Led by Hulkenberg on his return to the grid, the team often achieved strong results in Q2 and even Q3. Last year, Hulkenberg advanced to Q2 16 times and Q3 eight times, led by his performance at the Canadian Grand Prix. That Saturday, a combination of great effort and a bit of luck saw Hulkenberg line up his VF-23 on the front row next to Max Verstappen.
The grid penalty he was demoted to after qualifying meant he was several places lower than he started, and when the street lights went out in Montreal, it was Sunday and it was just another day.
That’s when race pace and tire management issues reared their ugly heads, as they often did at Haas in 2023. Despite starting in the points, Hulkenberg finished 15th.
“It’s pretty clear now. Obviously the result is not what we should have done and it’s very unfortunate. I think I know where to look, but the problem is if you go into traffic and you’re behind a car. As soon as you get there, it’s so degraded that you can’t get the performance of the tires back and you just go backwards. Team principal Günter Steiner at the time said:. “As soon as we start fighting away from free air, we clearly see that we will only decline. We really know what we need to look for, and we will continue to look for it. We need to rack our brains and find a solution without hiding behind a good qualifying result.”
Tire management will be a focus for the team during pre-season testing, but before that the team has undergone a shocking change at the top. Just before the start of the season, Steiner left the team, and former trackside engineering director Ayao Komatsu became team principal.
When the team arrived in Bahrain for pre-season testing, they had a clear focus on race pace. During the first two days of testing, Haas focused on long distance driving, determined to solve a pre-season mystery.
Did it work?
Early returns are a plus.
Points fell short in Bahrain, but in Saudi Arabia Kevin Magnussen held off the pack and secured a 10th place finish for Hulkenberg, giving the team a hard-fought and perhaps controversial points win. And last week in Australia, the team achieved its first double points finish since Austria in 2022, with Hulkenberg finishing ninth and Magnussen 10th.
Of course the results have changed, but the outlook surrounding the team has also changed.
“I showed good pace but unfortunately I got two penalties and of course it wasn’t a great day for me, but I made it through with an effort to keep everyone back to create a gap for Nico to pit. I think we made up for it.” He got the points, so that’s very important, and now I’m not fighting for the championship, so the real battle is in the constructors’ championship, and I got the points today. I’m happy to be able to do it,” Magnussen said after the Saudi Arabia game. Arabian Grand Prix. “This is huge for the team. We got it today. It’s positive that we have pace. For the second race in a row we showed that we have good pace.”
“The car felt better than yesterday’s qualifying, so I was even more encouraged today. It’s different from last year, but it’s realistic to do it this way,” Hulkenberg said after finishing ninth in Melbourne. Told.
Magnussen said this year’s team knows it will be able to compete on race day.
“It’s very encouraging and a different way to race. Last year I woke up on race day and knew it wasn’t going to be good. Today I woke up and thought we had a fighting chance. But it was true. My race pace was stronger than in qualifying, so I’ll just keep working in this direction,” declared Magnussen after the Australian Grand Prix.
So far, Haas appears to have truly conquered their biggest demons from preseason. If that doesn’t help, you may have questions like:
Could they be this year’s Williams?
