Piola: Haas's package conundrum has no end in sight

Perhaps someone could lend a penny for Gunther Steiner's thoughts right now. The start of the 2019 Formula 1 season promised so much for the Haas team, but has failed to deliver in every conceivable way.

The car looked like a dream to drive, like putty in the drivers' hands. A new black and gold livery appeared as Haas tied up a title sponsor for the first time. And, crucially, after a difficult 2018, a seemingly rejuvenated Romain Grosjean appeared to complement Kevin Magnussen on the driving front just so. Fourth place in the constructors' championship seemed, once again, there for the taking.

But it's all unravelled horribly, and Haas's season has featured more twists and turns than a twisty, turny thing. Never mind the title-sponsor saga, or the inability of Grosjean and Magnussen to race closely without trading paint (or worse, parts); the car seems to be the root cause of the team's largest headaches. The VF-19 appears to be the most frustrating of enigmas.

Even after Hockenheim, the team is still no closer to finding a resolution to its issues - largely because it's not especially clear what the issues are at this stage. Certainly, tyres are one of the biggest talking points; Haas was one of the teams to lobby for a return to last year's specification of Pirelli rubber, after struggling hugely with the thinner-gauge tread on this year's range.

"It's how the car influences the tyre," explained Steiner. "When we get the tyre to work, we are in it - and we just need to understand that, what does make it work and what not. We know the window is small of the tyre - where it works - that will not change, so we need to find out why we are popping out sometimes and sometimes not."

The net result of that is that Haas is beginning to doubt itself and the upgrade path it has followed. It's taken a step back, and Grosjean has run the last two weekends in Melbourne-spec, while Magnussen took back-to-back duties with a Barcelona-spec package before moving onto the new parts brought to Hockenheim for this weekend.

Grosjean is absolutely unequivocal in his view that the Melbourne package is the best. His belief is that the changes brought to the car for Barcelona has resulted in the team getting "a little lost", and that switching back has given him the confidence to push a little harder - resulting in an excellent sixth place on the grid at Hockenheim.

"I think we have to take it on the right side," enthused Grosjean, "and say that the team is able to produce a car that works extremely well. We may have got a little lost in the changes we made, but it's a good car.

"With the latest updates it seems to be more challenging and we need to understand why, but we've proven again we know how to do a car, so that is very positive. There are some limitations that we are well aware of with that package that we need to work on. But [it's] definitely surprising to be that quick and exciting at the same time."

Of course, the plan for the initial back-to-back at Silverstone was somewhat nixed by the opening-lap contact between the two cars, prompting Steiner to bash the neatly coiffured heads of Grosjean and Magnussen together. That setback led to Haas running Magnussen's car in Barcelona-spec once more, delaying the installation of the new parts brought to Hockenheim.

Those new parts appeared on the car in last Friday afternoon's second practice session. One of the most visually striking of those was a new rear-wing endplate, which featured a completely new approach to the strakes overhanging at the point the endplate bows inwards. The previous design of nine, vertical teeth was discarded and replaced with a trio of curved slots, as seen from Giorgio Piola's illustration below.

When tyre wake is kicked up at the rear, those strakes usually serve to pick it up and straighten it out to minimise any resulting drag. But while those strakes can deal with airflow washing along horizontally, they struggle to deal with it once it has a downwards component of movement.

After trying the new update package in second Hockenheim practice, Magnussen wasn't convinced at all

Haas's solution is different, and appears to address the aforementioned gripes. A new bargeboard geometry was also brought to Hockenheim, adding a now-popular 'boomerang' to the equation. This paired up with a newly reconfigured 'Venetian blind' turning vane, where Haas extended its top element to blend into the boomerang section (red arrow, below).

Behind the bargeboards' mounting point onto the chassis (featuring a hare decal), the next element features two serrations - marked with the yellow arrow - at the top to peel airflow shed from the suspension components downwards. There's also a much greater concentration of vertically mounted turning vanes (green arrow) attached to the floor, suggesting a much greater effort to control the rotational flow emerging from the front wing and send it outwards a lot earlier to keep the turbulence from the tyres away from the floor.

One of Haas's biggest problems with the VF-19 car is rear-end stability, something that Grosjean feels has been compounded by the Barcelona updates. The new bargeboard package was pressed into service to address that, managing the input into the floor to boost diffuser performance.

But after trying the new update package in second Hockenheim practice, Magnussen wasn't convinced at all. It seemed that, on first glance, the Melbourne set-up had a clear advantage; Grosjean placed sixth in the session, while Magnussen was a lowly 18th - his fastest time 1.3 seconds slower than his team-mate's.

"It didn't really feel too much different to the Barcelona upgrade initially," explained Magnussen after the session. "I don't know if there's stuff that can be done - well, there certainly is stuff that can be done, but we'll see what that is tonight, and we'll see tomorrow what it gives.

"I can't go back to race-one spec even though I'd love to. It looked like a very big gap today and it's not what you want to see when you're bringing new upgrades. You want to make progress.

"Initially it didn't seem like it has done that and it was the same with the upgrade for Barcelona. But we have to pursue knowledge and try to understand why these upgrades that were meant to be better, weren't.

"Look at the time from Kevin in FP3, it was an amazing time. Where did it come from? I don't know" Gunther Steiner

"If the difference is as big as it was today, we've got to look at maybe just going back to race one with both cars, make the best of this season, try to get as many points as we can with that car. But it's hard to make any conclusions at this point."

Then, almost overnight, the balance shifted. As temperatures in Germany dropped by about 10C, a bucketload of performance just seemed to emerge on Magnussen's car from nowhere. The team confirmed that no changes were made, but the milder conditions appeared to make a world of difference. Much happier on Saturday morning with the handling of his car, Magnussen was fifth in practice three - a sea change from the previous day's disappointment.

Qualifying was a tougher nut to crack, and Magnussen couldn't quite launch a concerted assault into making Q3 as Grosjean swept to sixth. Still, it was an encouraging result - if not in terms of grid position, but in understanding the capricious VF-19 and all of its quirks.

"It's hard to explain," Magnussen said, "but the main thing it follows as a trend is that yesterday was very hot and this morning was very cold - 36C or 38C, something like that - in track temperature. So then the car just transformed completely and became a really, really good car and then in qualifying the temperature went up a bit again and we took a step back. We can't say we understand. But it seems to be a trend.

"The other car seems to be more consistent, whether it is cold or hot. At the end of the day it is not only my decision, we need to do what's best for the team. But it's no secret I would like to go back to the old one if I could. But we need to think long-term also."

Of course, the wet race rather dampened any chances of developing a greater understanding between the packages. Whether the Hockenheim package is a step up over the Barcelona specification is still largely unknown, let alone when stacked up against the original, vanilla car. The jury's still out on what the team will do next, although it seems that the practice sessions in next weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix will once again be dedicated to benchmarking between the two specifications.

"At the moment, we haven't decided completely," Steiner admitted after the race. "We think so, but we're not 100% sure what we're going to.

"If we would've come to the conclusion that the Melbourne car is faster, we would change to Melbourne car. We haven't come to that conclusion because, in FP3, look at the time from Kevin, it was an amazing time. Where did it come from? I don't know."

But the most salient point is that Haas can't just drop everything and focus on next year. It needs to understand where the issues lie - not only to rescue a so-far disappointing 2019, but to also carry forward what it's learned for next season to avoid the same mistakes. Rule changes for next year are scarce, and so most of the cars will be straightforward evolutions of this year's menagerie of machines. That places even more importance on Haas's engineers solving the riddle of the VF-19.

And while Haas's German Grand Prix adventures ended with a morale-boosting double-points finish, there's still a multitude of problems to solve. The 2019 season has reached the halfway point, and while the team now has a lot more data compared to how it began the year, it still seems no closer to finding any answers.

But there's a simple truth, and one that Haas would be wise to heed. If you're not finding the answers you're looking for, you may be asking the wrong questions.