Carlos Sainz admits he is surprised by Haas F1’s lack of consistency and pace given his belief the Banbury-based American squad is effectively a “Ferrari ‘B’ team”.
The Spaniard’s claim is based on the lack of improved performance by Haas in 2017 compared to that the Scuderia has made despite using many of the same components on the VF-17 as seen on the three-time race winning SF70-H.
Currently, Haas sits seventh in Constructors’ Championship, four points behind Sainz’s Toro Rosso team but have scored their best results of the year at the last two races with Romain Grosjean’s sixth in Austria and Kevin Magnussen seventh in Baku.
“Haas, in the end, is a Ferrari ‘B’ team,” he said. “If you look at the car and the engine itself, it’s more a Ferrari than anything else.
“It is a bit of a surprise that they haven’t performed better up until now.”
The 22-year-old did acknowledge, however, that the brakes, which have been an issue for Haas and are not supplied by Ferrari, seem to be the main performance indicator.
“On tracks where they don’t struggle with brakes, with bumps or with kerbs, they put the downforce they have and the engine that they have and you look here and they have a very competitive car,” he commented.
“They performed really well in Australia, they performed massively in Austria.”
Adding to Sainz’s comments, Force India deputy team boss Bob Fernley believes experience and expertise are also significant factors.
“Perhaps Carlos is right and they are a Ferrari ‘B’ team,” he said. “They have some Ferrari technology in their car which makes it a good one.
“However, it’s not Ferrari personnel extracting that performance,” he expanded. “You’ve still got to do a lot of things right trackside in order to extract the performance.
“As the time goes on, if the car is fundamentally good they’ll learn how to extract that performance,” he predicted.
