Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHaas F1 Team

Haas rethinks December shakedown for 2016 car

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The Haas F1 Team will not complete a December shakedown with its 2016 car as originally planned this year.

Speaking to F1i during an exclusive interview during pre-season testing at Jerez, team owner Gene Haas said the plan was for the new car to run at the end of the current season before its debut next year. Haas has been developing its car as part of a technical partnership with Ferrari.

However, Haas revealed to F1i during the Italian Grand Prix weekend that those plans have now been changed, with the car unlikely to run on track before the official start of pre-season testing in 2016. The reason for the revision is to allow the team as much development time as possible ahead of its entry.

Team principal Guenther Steiner told the official Formula One website there is still a chance the car will run a day before the first pre-season test.

“On 1st March 2016, on the first all-team test day,” Steiner said when asked about its debut. “It could be that we will perform a shakedown one day before - on 29th February - but nothing more is planned so far.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.