Covid-19 travel restrictions are wreaking havoc with Haas’ preparations for the 2021 Formula 1 season, according to Auto Motor und Sport.
With teams carrying over the same chassis from last year to save costs, the American team is facing the unique situation of building up their car themselves at their UK base rather than sending parts to Dallara in Italy to be assembled.
The caveat of this, however, is Ferrari engineers are currently unable to travel to Banbury to install the new upgraded engine, meaning it is unlikely Haas will be able to fire up their VF-21 before pre-season testing next month.
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Furthermore, team boss Guenther Steiner is also currently in America, meaning: “If I wanted to fly to England, I would first have to be quarantined for two weeks. Only athletes are exempt from that rule,” he said.
This comes as Haas is already anticipating a rather uncompetitive 2021, as the team only plans to make the mandated aero changes for this year’s car while putting all of their resources into the new regulations coming for 2022.
“We could have built a new nose, but we were too late,” Steiner explained to AMuS. “The wind tunnel program had been shut down too long for us to have the nose ready before the deadline at the end of September.
“It can happen that we have to work on the 2021 car again if we discover during the test drives that we have made a mistake.
“That would be plan B. Actually, we don’t want to use any more wind tunnel time for the 2021 car.”
