13/05/2021
NEWS STORY
Despite the involvement of Dallara and Ferrari, Guenther Steiner insists that the team's 2022 car will be designed by Haas... as was ever the case., as he explains the team's somewhat complicated technical set-up.
To many, the technical structure at Haas remains one of life's mysteries.
From the outset, the American team took advantage of the regulations that allowed it to use numerous components provided by Ferrari, while having its car designed and built by Dallara.
With Ferrari now running a so-called satellite operation, albeit involving former Maranello employees, within Haas, this has led to speculation that the Italian company is aiding with the American outfit's 2022 car.
Unfortunately, Guenther Steiner's explanation of his team's technical structure poses more questions than it answers.
"The car is always designed by Haas F1," the Italian snaps, at the claim the current car is designed and built by Dallara, "it was and it still is. It's just from different people.
"We had our people last year... two years ago, sorry, not last year, as last year we stopped for quite a while, more people from Dallara and we replaced some of the people from Dallara with people from Ferrari.
"It's not a satellite Ferrari team," he adds, "we have got the Haas F1 structure but we still have an office at Dallara as well because we use about an average of 30 people from Dallara as well.
"Nothing has changed in the principle," he insists, "it's just that instead of having some people from Dallara before, we got some people from Ferrari for the future. Not a lot has changed it's just the exchange of where they are coming from."
Asked if the people from Ferrari are working on the 2022 car or assisting with the current, albeit 2019/2020 car, and exactly where Dallara fits into all this, he explains: "They are concentrating on the '22 car.
"As I said plenty of times before, we abandoned the '21 car. We did a little bit of work on reliability issues with the '21 car but they are now getting to the end.
"So all the people in Maranello - because this is Haas people and Ferrari people - they are focusing '22, and Dallara they switched over to '22 and they do the odd job on the '21 car if it is needed but not performance, just for issues if we have one."
So there you go, as clear as mud.