Haas is once again being one of the weakest links in the Formula 1 field. With three rounds to go, they only have 16 points, struggling to enter the top ten in both qualifying and racing. And the development pace of the VF-23 is far from satisfactory, at least for one of its drivers – Nico Hülkenberg.
In addition to not being very kind to the tires, the car has received few significant updates – the last of which was at the United States Grand Prix, which so far doesn’t seem to have radically changed the competitiveness.
After not scoring points last weekend at the Mexican Grand Prix, Hülkenberg questioned Haas’ development pace, emphasizing that it is insufficient for F1, as quoted by RacingNews365.com: ‘It’s inevitable. We are paying the price for not bringing updates, for not finding performance. Hopefully, it will be a wake-up call for everyone in the factory because at this pace, you simply cannot compete in F1’.
The German driver also believes that the previous version of the Haas VF-23 could have been more suitable for Mexico, considering the characteristics of the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez: ‘If the old specification really had some good characteristics, it was more or less competitive in low speed, and obviously, this track is dominated by low speed. I don’t know, I have the feeling that maybe the old specification would have been better here, but it’s obviously a one-way street for us with the future’.
