Haas was expected to be one of the teams capable of seriously fighting for fifth or sixth place in the 2025 Constructors’ Championship, but the start in Melbourne told a very different story.
After extensive testing with heavy fuel loads in Sakhir—impressing with their preparation—the team, led by Ayao Komatsu, was quickly brought back to reality after discovering a major aerodynamic issue during the Australian Grand Prix weekend.
The VF-25s struggled significantly in high-speed corners, forcing the team to raise the ride height to prevent bouncing. However, this led to a loss of performance, making Haas the slowest team on the grid.
Melbourne is known to be a peculiar track, an atypical street circuit, and now Formula 1 moves to Shanghai for the Chinese Grand Prix. However, Haas fears the same problems encountered in Australia will resurface. In short, the VF-25 has an aerodynamic issue, and according to Ayao Komatsu, the team will have to live with it for the early races of 2025.
“I don’t think the problems we had in Melbourne are limited to that track. It was a big surprise because we never expected anything like this after testing in Bahrain.”
“During the three days of testing in Sakhir, the car wasn’t perfect, but we never expected to perform so poorly in Melbourne. Honestly, I thought something was broken on the cars. But when we confirmed that nothing was actually broken, we realized we had a real, serious problem.”
“From the first practice session, it was clear that our issues were in high-speed sections like Turn 9 and Turn 10. We spent the whole weekend trying to be faster through those corners. We also have problems in slow corners, but compared to the fast ones, it’s like night and day.”
“In the end, we focused a lot on Turn 10 to understand our issues, and honestly, we’re glad we discovered them early in Melbourne. We are identifying the problem, and the next step will be determining which part of the car needs to be modified. However, we need to understand if and when we’ll find a solution. It will be a relatively short process, but we still have to go through the usual steps with CFD and wind tunnel testing. We will be dealing with this issue for a few races, that’s for sure.”
The VF-25’s problems are also linked to ride height, meaning the aerodynamic load is lost when the car is raised. However, keeping it low results in bouncing.
“Over the winter, we tried to improve the car’s performance. The simulations looked good. But then, when we tackled Turn 10, everything surfaced. We saw a dynamic issue between Turn 9 and Turn 10, as well as an aerodynamic problem. We understand this now, but it’s a combination of aerodynamic oscillations and rear downforce characteristics. When these factors overlap, it makes the car very difficult to drive.”
For this reason, the team had to raise the car to make it more drivable over the weekend. The issues seen in Melbourne were not as evident in Bahrain due to the nature of the Sakhir circuit.
“I think it’s due to the characteristics of the Bahrain track. If you look at the high-speed corners, like Turn 6, yes, it’s fast, but not particularly representative. Turn 12, for example, was more relevant, but it’s flat-out. Today, Esteban Ocon is upset with himself. He told me, ‘Ayao, I should have warned you more, but at the time, it wasn’t a corner that cost us lap time, so I didn’t say anything. Now I realize what happened and what we missed.'”
“In Bahrain, we noticed some aerodynamic oscillation, but we worked on it and found a solution. And in Bahrain, it worked very well. Then we focused on medium-to-high fuel loads. If we had known about the issue we encountered in Melbourne, we definitely would have done more low-fuel runs without DRS, because that’s where we are struggling the most.”
Haas engineers are working not only to prepare the VF-25s as best as possible for Shanghai but also to understand the root cause of the aerodynamic issue that is generating bouncing in corners. One of the main suspects is the floor, which caused Ferrari difficulties in 2024 and ultimately cost them the Constructors’ title after a summer where they were only the fourth-best team.
“As mentioned, we are focusing on areas that could be affecting the aerodynamics, and the floor is certainly one of the components that could influence the car’s behavior, considering that the problem is aerodynamic.”
“How long will we have to suffer from this issue? I’d love to know. Honestly, I don’t. We need to develop new components quickly, but that’s not something that happens overnight. And we will likely have to take some risks with certain parts,” concluded the Haas team principal.
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