F1 2022 cars give teams “fire and ambition”

Simone Resta, Haas technical director, believes the opportunity to build a new car from scratch for 2022 has given engineers “fire and ambition”.

Cars will radically move away from the current era of machines with new aerodynamic regulations aimed at promoting more exciting racing across the field by reducing turbulent air.

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Without doing previous iterations, engineers are given the opportunity to test new theories as long as they comply with the regulations.

“I believe that the introduction of a new set of regulations is a unique opportunity for the team to come up with ideas from the ground up as there are no references to existing cars,” said Resta.

“In the eyes of every engineer, you can see the fire and the ambition to prove that they can come up with the best design or concept.

“In a way, there are many common elements and situations between new car projects, but it is also true that they are all different because the conditions are not the same.

“With a new set of rules you try to develop something that doesn’t yet exist – that’s very exciting – and having learned from previous experience is a key element in facing new challenges in order to maximize the team result.”

Haas started “almost from scratch” in 2022

The regulations for 2022 were originally supposed to be introduced this season, but have been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Due to the little development work at Haas before 2021, Resta announced that the project was almost entirely new when it arrived at the start of Ferrari’s current campaign.

“This major rule change was originally planned for 2021, when the Covid pandemic hit our sport, it was decided to postpone the introduction of the new regulations to 2022 with several changes.

“At the same time, the aerodynamic development on this platform was frozen for the rest of 2020.

“When that decision was made, Haas was at a point where only some small development work was done, so in 2021 it was basically a restart of those regulations.

“I joined the team in January this year and started working with the team almost from scratch on the new technical organization, minimal work required to legalize the VF-21.”