Mini F1 pitwall gives Haas $500k more to spend on car development

Haas is already saving $250,000 with its smaller three-person pitwall which appeared at Bahrain testing. Now it has plans to double the efficiencies to boost its development budget

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Halving the size of its pitwall has already boosted Haas's development budget

Florent Gooden / DPPI

Haas could save as much as $500,000 (£420,000) to redirect to its car development this season, simply by reducing the size of and construction of its pitwall.

All teams have differing pitwall designs, ranging from eight seats on the AlphaTauri offering to four on the Mercedes at the Bahrain test, but all have tended to be of similar size. However, Haas appeared on the opening day with a much smaller, lighter pitwall, featuring just three seating positions as it had amended half of its existing set-up.

Those three seats — known as prat perches — are to be used by team principal Guenther Steiner, team manager Pete Crolla and chief race engineer Ayao Komatsu, with the rest of the team members who used to sit on the pitwall taking up positions in the garage or in remote locations.

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Steiner content to downsize in 2023

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The initial transportation saving is estimated by Haas to be $250,000, and it isn’t stopping there. By amending the way the pit wall is produced and can be packed, it intends to purchase six versions that can then be sent via sea freight, saving it another $250,000 compared to using air freight for transport.

Steiner himself says the decision to make the change was to be able to reallocate resources to try and improve car performance.

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“The only way to get faster is development so we try to free up as much as possible for development and not spend it on prat perches for example, having a lot of people there,” he said.

Haas’s budget is currently at the cost cap limit, so the team must make savings on one area if it wants to direct extra resources to development. Despite the smart cost saving, Steiner says it’s only a successful move if it is able to deliver a quicker car.

“I’m not up for saying ‘We put a package on [the car]’. If the package doesn’t bring anything you spend money and do nothing. We put timelines in and see what we can develop and that is what we make. Be it a full package, be it just a little fairing, be it a front wing – whatever comes we have got quite a good budget now to do upgrades and we adjust it as we go along and while we find performance in the wind tunnel.

“We don’t define it as ‘We want new bodywork at all costs for Barcelona’ because if we go and develop new bodywork and it doesn’t give any advantage, why would we produce it? So we just try to manage it like this.”

Last year McLaren revealed that it would be switching from air freight to sea freight for its garage equipment, calculating that it was cheaper to buy five sets of tools to be shipped to race locations, rather than flying one set around the world.