Haas: Austin upgrade still 'on-plan', will offer heads up on 2024

Haas says its upcoming US Grand Prix upgrade is still "on-plan" and while the team is expecting a positive impact from the change, the update will mainly provide the outfit with a heads up on its 2024 design.

The second year of F1's ground-effects regulations has been challenging for Haas. While its VF-23 has displayed on occasion a strong pace in qualifying, chronic tyre degradation issues have severely impacted its form on race day.

The team has tried its best to mitigate its troubles through tireless trial and error set-up work, but with little success.

Haas' outings in F1's recent Asian races produced a good result for the team in Singapore and a less impressive performance in Japan.

At Marina Bay, both Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg qualified among the top-ten, while the former picked up a point on race day, but there were no points put on the board at Suzuka.

Read also:

• Magnussen: Haas team in 'survival mode' until US GP

"We’re working hard to get out of this hole and that’s what motivates me every day of the week," commented Has team boss Guenther Steiner ahead of this week's Qatar Grand Prix.

"I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know we’re working hard and getting better to where we want to be and should be.

"We know our car and that we’re struggling at the moment in the race, everyone is well aware of this.

"Always, the whole team tries to do their best, starting with the drivers, to the mechanics and engineers, squeezing everything out of what we’ve got.

"Then when the opportunity is there, we get a point or at least we get something from qualifying. If you look at our pit stops in the last races, they were pretty good.

"Hats off to the team as they keep their heads up and keep on pushing as they know better days are ahead."

Having reached a dead-end with its current car in terms of development, Haas will roll out a significant upgrade later this month at Austin.

The update is based on an all-new aero concept, and one around which its 2024 contender is being designed.

"The program is on-plan so everything should be done," Steiner said.

"Everyone in the team has done a good job in doing the planning for this – the purchasing department has worked day and night to get everything ordered in time, the design office worked and gave the drawings to the purchasing department – the company worked as it should.

"We don’t know how good the upgrade will be, we expect something good out of it, but the best thing is that we’re going in the direction we want to go next year and we will learn a lot this year for next season."

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter