29/07/2022
NEWS STORY
Amidst talk of the much-anticipated update resulting in a "white Ferrari", Haas boss, Guenther Steiner jokes "why would we copy Williams?"
Even before the American team revealed the package, social media was awash with claims of Haas turning up in Hungary with a "white Ferrari", courtesy of its increasingly close relationship with the Maranello outfit.
The update package, which is only available to Kevin Magnussen this weekend, includes a new floor, engine cover, cooling louvres, rear suspension and rear brake winglets.
Other than the obvious financial issues, while others were introducing their upgrades on a regular basis, Haas always maintained that it wanted to get the most out of its original package first, and based on some of the most recent races it was a policy that was working.
Asked today about the "white Ferrari" tag, Steiner was his usual no-nonsense self.
"I expect to be fast," he told reporters. "If somebody says we copy, then why should we copy the Williams?" he added.
"I mean, no disrespect to Williams, but it's a completely different concept and they are behind us. So if you copy something, you copy the best you can and, at the moment, it's Ferrari and Red Bull.
"We have the same engine as Ferrari, same gearbox, the same suspension, why would we copy anything else? And they're winning races? So 1 and 1 is 2, and we are not stupid.
"There are three concepts out there," he explained, "the Ferrari concept, the Red Bull concept and the Mercedes concept. We are close to Ferrari, so obviously we're going to see what Ferrari has done and copy that one," he admitted.
"But it takes time because we had to launch the car and race, and then we had to go into the wind tunnel to do testing, looking at that car.
"I think we are in a good place for where we are supposed to be," he said. "We didn't expect to come out this strong in the beginning. So we said let's try to gain as much as possible and let's look at what is out there and try to see which direction we can go; looking at them."
Though it is far too early to be drawing conclusions, based on today's evidence the Haas does appear to be more of a "white Williams" than a "white Ferrari", Magnussen finishing 17th in FP1, 2.171s off the pace, and 16th in FP2, 1.373s off the pace, in both sessions only marginally quicker than teammate Mick Schumacher who didn't have the update package.
Check out our Friday gallery from the Hungaroring here.