The season has just begun but Haas has already banked with just one race the amount of points for two full seasons. But what was the path of the team that will arrive in Jeddah as "Third force"?
Barcelona, first stage of the pre-season tests of the 2022 season. Haas prepares to hit the track for the last day of the three scheduled. Work on the single-seater continues at full speed. There is optimism in view of this "new era", thanks to the arrival of the Ferrari-branded Supertfast engine, and the ambitious 2022 project of the VF-22, creature that has so much of its designer, Simone subtraction, former senior designer at Ferrari, landed, with its know-how, first in Alfa Romeo, up to the Haas, another satellite team of the stable of Maranello. Right here, all the work on took place single-seater 2022, in a new design office. 2022 was therefore the year of great promises and great hopes. A bit like the other base team a Maranello, Ferrari, with which the Haas has been collaborating since 2016.
Haas is coming from difficult years. A badly conceived single-seater; the Pandemic that blocked development; the financial crisis; the complicated relationship with the pilots; the postponement of the new regulation. All these events, from the end of 2019 onwards, have delayed the development of a more competitive single-seater, placing the team in a "stalemate" phase which has undermined its survival in the top category. The arrival of the sponsor uralkali, carried by the Russian pilot Nikita mazepin, in 2021, allowed the team to open a small window to get some fresh air. It was clear, however, that with a single-seater without development and with a couple of young and inexperienced drivers, it would be yet another season to close.
The work in the team, the bond with Dallas, the arrival of new members who have just arrived from the staff Ferrari, have given the right motivation to the professionals. However, the solid foundations of this relationship were put to the test with the sting, which arrived on the eve of the third day of testing at Barcelona: the complicated divorce between the Haas, uralkali and its pilot of reference, due to the relationship with the motherland, and the recent invasion of this against Ukraine. As if that weren't enough, the American team had to recover, during the tests in Bahrain, 4 hours of a session on the first day lost due to the late arrival of the cargo with the components of the single-seaters.
Without sponsors, with a diplomatic crisis caused by the outright dismissal of Mazepin, with only one driver (Mick Schumacher) and a car as white as a painter's virgin canvas, Haas experienced nightmare days. The return of Magnussen in place of Nikita, partially eased this climate of tension within the team. In fact, the Dane spent the last years of his career in the American team, and although it was a traumatic divorce for him, he was surrounded by affection, trust and gratitude.
A trust that, seeing the work done by Kevin over the weekend Bahrain, was largely reciprocated. The work of Haas now moves along two directives: the one of find a sponsor for next year and that of smile again, and to make the drivers smile with a competitive single-seater. The first is covered at full throttle, thanks also to the power of the registered engine Ferrari. Power in this first phase of the championship was in fact put before conservation, both to immediately collect an advantage, and to get people talking like you do when you wear the most beautiful dress for a special occasion. the second way, one also said it Gunther Steiner joyful, is in the making, and currently, it represents the realization of a dream, which he doesn't know where it will take them but which has currently put them at the top of the world and in the constructors' championship.
