Haas at the truce: Faithful

After a catastrophic 2021 season with 0 points and a last place, Haas wanted to start on new foundations in order to score points and rank higher in the standings. This has been achieved with a fight for 7th place. With its drivers Magnussen and Mick Schumacher, the team is betting on a balanced team with a fairly young and promising driver and another one with experience. Magnussen replaced Mazepin just before the start of the season due to the war in Ukraine.

The best race.

Mick Schumacher and Kevin Magnussen achieved their best performance of the season in Austria by collecting 14 points. With a 6th place for Schumacher and an 8th place for Magnussen, the team made a good impression during this Grand Prix. Both drivers managed to maintain relatively high positions after good performances in qualifying, with Magnussen finishing 6th and Schumacher 7th.

The worst race.

It’s obvious that the team had its worst race during the Monaco Grand Prix. Both drivers had to retire. They started the race in 13th and 15th positions but failed to fight their way up the rankings and were even forced to withdraw from the race. A water leakage issue in the ERS system for Magnussen and a massive crash that split the Formula 1 car in two for Schumacher got the better of the drivers. It was a disappointment and a weekend to forget for Haas.

A progression?

Haas is having a inconsistent first half of the season. With a strong start, especially from Magnussen who scored points in 3 out of the first 4 Grand Prix races, Haas had the potential for a good first part of the season. However, a drought of 5 races has left a bad impression halfway through the season. In the end, the drivers only managed to score points in 5 out of the 13 races already completed. The team’s results need to be reviewed and improved for the second half of the season in order to maintain their 7th place and perhaps even aim for 6th place.

Reliability compared to the rest of the field.

With 7 retirements in the beginning of the championship, Haas is one of the teams with the highest number of retirements. The cars are not very reliable compared to other teams. This reliability is the reason for the low number of points scored by the drivers, which could be much higher without these retirements. An improvement is expected for the second half of the season in order to continue winning points.

Pilot’s duel

Magnussen is having a mixed season. He has scored a lot of points with 22, but hasn’t finished in the top 10 that often. He has already retired 4 times and has only finished in the top 10 5 times. It’s a rather disappointing result for the experienced Danish driver. As for the qualifications, he is performing well. Half of his qualifying sessions end in a top 10 finish.

For Schumacher, it’s a very timid start to the season. With only 12 points and a 15th place in the standings, he has only finished in the top 10 twice this year and therefore in the points. He remains in the lower part of the standings most of the time.

The qualifications are also very disappointing. He only managed to be in the top 10 at the start of the races 3 times. These numbers show that the qualifications heavily penalize him for the Grand Prix and that he will have to give more effort to hope to score more points.

Between the two, it’s Magnussen who dominates in terms of points and in the driver standings. He finishes in the top 10 more often, but in head-to-head battles with Schumacher, he ends up behind him more often. Quite strange performances considering the points obtained by the Danish driver.

Championship position.

Haas ranks 7th in the constructors’ standings with a slight lead over its rivals, AlphaTauri and Aston Martin. The team can still hope for a better ranking and is less than 20 points behind the 6th-placed team, Alfa Romeo.