Yesterday we saw the unveiling of the new black and gold liveried Haas VF-19 F1 car, replete with its new main sponsor, the unconventional Rich Energy.
What is usual for F1 team livery launches is to simply bolt on the newer aero pieces mandated by a rule update onto last seasons car, but for Haas it appeared that what we saw the actual 2019 chassis.
Eagle-eyed ex-TJ13 ‘forensics’ writer Matt Somers who now writes for motorsport.com, recently published some analysis on the Haas revealing some significant developments including a special double-stacked exhaust arrangement.
Today, motorsport.com published Matt and Jonathan Noble’s take on what the exhaust stack might be doing in terms of aero, theorising that it could actually be blowing the rear wing, increasing downforce.
Rather than having the two turbo wastegate pipes exiting at the side of the main exhaust like other teams, Ferrari during practice at Hockenheim 2018, stacked the wastegate exhausts one on top of the other.
It is thought that working in conjunction with the rear wing, a bit like Renault’s attempt last year, to blow the rear wing and circumnavigate the limited exhaust angle rule designed to prevent this.
Another reason could be that mounting the exhausts in this way enables even tighter packaging of the rear bodywork, making the car more ‘slippery’.
TJ13 expects that all Ferrari powered teams will also run this wastegate arrangement, and indeed run very similar aero concepts to Ferrari. The 2019 Haas, and last years Sauber both are very similar to Ferrari. A clear and deliberate move by Ferrari to share the development and testing across several teams under their umbrella. Much like Red Bull and Toro Rosso.
If you prefer your analysis in audio and visual format…
The @HaasF1Team VF-19#SIMPLIF1EDhttps://t.co/XNPF5tIQYr
— Matthew Somerfield 🅢🅞🅜🅔🅡🅢Ⓕ① (@SomersF1) February 8, 2019
