25/08/2023
NEWS STORY
Round 14 of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship commenced with practice on Friday at Circuit Zandvoort as teams prepared for Sunday's 72-lap Dutch Grand Prix.
MoneyGram Haas F1 Team returned to action after the summer break trialing a new front-wing on the VF-23 in FP1 - the upgrade part of a Zandvoort package designed to improve overall car consistency. Kevin Magnussen was first to sample the upgraded component in a series of comparison runs on the Pirelli P Zero White hard tire. The Dane stuck with the latest configuration for his outing on the Red soft tire, clocking a fastest time of 1:13.322 for P14. Nico Hulkenberg started his day with an eight-lap run on the Yellow medium compound. The German then sampled the upgraded front-wing when he swapped onto softs - setting a best time of 1:14.023 (P18) before an off at Turn 13 ended his run plan early - a short red flag stop followed to extract Hulkenberg's VF-23 from the gravel.
FP2 saw Hulkenberg back on-track starting with an outing on the hard rubber. A return to the garage for a set of softs resulted in a best time of 1:12.693 (P18) as Hulkenberg worked his quali sim before concluding his Friday program with a high-fuel stint back on the hard compound. Magnussen opted for the medium tires to start his afternoon's plan before the standard switch to softs - ultimately logging a 1:12.404 lap to take P17 on the timesheet. Magnussen remained on the softs for a high-fuel distance run through to the checkered flag.
MoneyGram Haas F1 Team ran a total of 102 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 - 58 by Magnussen and 44 from Hulkenberg.
Kevin Magnussen: "I think the updates made a difference. It's more of an upgrade in terms of bettering the characteristics of the car a little bit, and I think it helped. There's lots of work to do, I don't think it will move us much out of the place we're in at the moment, but nonetheless it's a step, I'm happy about it. It seems we're struggling a bit more for pace this time but there's always hope and always opportunities, so we'll see what we can do."
Nico Hulkenberg: "FP2 was smooth, no real problems. The main problem is not having enough pace, and we're looking for pace and balance, and finding more performance really. [In FP1] there wasn't much damage at all, it wasn't a big thing that I tried - it was just a little too much speed, a little bit of wind in that situation, the brake balance was a little bit too much rearwards, and those combined mean you can have an off. This is an old school track with gravel, so I didn't do too much damage but lost some track time."
Guenther Steiner, Team Principal: "The good thing today is that we got through our run program. We'll see what the data says about the new parts that we've brought as we haven't got all conclusions yet, but we're obviously not happy with the pace shown in FP1 and FP2. We tried a few things, so maybe we just need to get things together. We need to look deeper into what the new parts brought and what they haven't, and start fresh again tomorrow morning."
Check out our Friday gallery from Zandvoort here.