The Formula 1 car reveals have begun ahead of the 2022 season’s start on March 18, and the first team to unveil their challenger is Haas. Called the VF-22, the car is supposedly their most complex to date, and the team hopes it will enable them to return to the midfield instead of being relegated to the back of the pack yet again. Piloting the car will, once again, be Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin, who hope to be fighting for points this year after scoring none in their debut season.
Clad in the team’s red, white, and blue color scheme, the
car wears a very similar livery to last year’s. Typically, though, these car
reveals tend to be more of a preview than an actual reveal, as teams don’t want
anyone else copying any potentially innovative designs they may have come up
with.
That’s especially important this year, where the biggest
regulation changes in years have forced teams to adopt a completely new aero
philosophy. Nevertheless, the VF-22 shown in Haas’s renderings differs
significantly from the show car presented by F1 back in July, so this could
actually be somewhat close to their actual design.
Starting up front, the nose is slimmer, more tapered and
more squared off, and it stops lower on the front wing than in the show car.
And on the topic of that wing, it also features much curvier flaps, while its
endplates are concave instead of convex. Moving back, the car features pushrod
suspension instead of the show car’s pullrods, and the side pods have been
widened while its intakes have shrunk. Finally, the center intake above the
driver features a triangular design in contrast to the show car’s circular one,
and the rear wing is much straighter.
