After the Japanese Grand Prix, Haas F1 Team sat in the heady heights of fourth in Formula 1’s constructors’ championship, two points clear of Alpine. Yet, a muted weekend at its ‘home’ race in Miami has now put it five points behind the Anglo-French outfit, courtesy of Pierre Gasly’s sprint race point and Franco Colapinto’s run to seventh.
Much of that can be put down to the efficacy of their respective updates; Alpine made a raft of changes to its aero package, while Haas only registered one change in Miami: a small additional element to the diffuser winglet.
On pace, this put Haas in the ballpark with the improved Williams FW48, which had also received plenty of attention. Oliver Bearman theorised that, if he’d been able to undercut Alex Albon, he’d have kept position and clinched 10th; the Briton ran close to Albon after the stops, but did not have enough pace to make a pass work.
While Haas could keep pace with Alpine in the opening three rounds, the changes made to the A526 have the American squad feeling slightly worried. While the cut-and-thrust of the development battle will ensure Haas will have its own opportunities to hit back over the coming races and push clear of the likes of Williams, Racing Bulls, and Audi, Alpine has found great strides in simply removing one of its key weaknesses.
“They had an issue in high-speed, and then it looks like they’ve sorted that, and they’ve brought a huge amount of upgrades for this event,” Bearman said in Miami. “We brought zero, so we were anticipating a tough weekend – that turned out to be the case.”
This is partly why Alpine had fallen out of the window slightly in Melbourne, and why Colapinto struggled for performance in Suzuka. In low-to-medium speed conditions, the car was well-behaved and both drivers could capitalise. This explains its strong performance in China, where there are very few high-speed corners – and even the longer-radius corners tighten up towards the end of the cornering phase.
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
The problem has been in getting the front-end to bite around the high-speed turns. Gasly has been able to find a way to keep the front of the car interested through the quicker sections of the circuits, largely through set-up options and in tailoring his driving style to match. For Colapinto, it’s been a more arduous situation; without Gasly’s experience or confidence, the Argentine hadn’t been able to find a workaround. This only extruded the gap between the pair.
In Miami, the front-end waywardness appeared to be cured; both cars made Q3, with Colapinto ahead of Gasly in all three sessions. Alpine’s Q1 run plan, however, lured Haas into a false sense of security; Bearman was three tenths clear of Colapinto in the opening phase, with Esteban Ocon a tenth clear of Gasly – but the Alpines had only used one set of tyres in that opening stage.
Instead, Haas’ day came back to Earth with a shuddering halt in Q2.
“I think the true pace came out,” Bearman said of qualifying. “It was good at the start of Q1, but actually we were on quite a different run plan with others. I felt like we’d actually caught up a bit of a gap to Alpine, for example. But they only did one set of tyres and they showed their true pace in Q2 – and we were not in the battle with them.”
Bearman was half a second away from Gasly in Q2. While this year’s Haas has demonstrable weaknesses in single-lap pace, it has usually been able to make up for it on Sundays; instead, the Briton ended up 36 seconds down on Colapinto in the Miami Grand Prix. That said, there was the feeling that the team’s execution hadn’t helped his or Ocon’s cause – both drivers lost time in the pitlane, which Bearman reckoned cost the undercut to Albon.
Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team
Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images
Haas does have some hope that it can reclaim some degree of parity to Alpine, with a larger collection of updates expected for Montreal. Unlike its rival team, there isn’t a smoking-gun weakness in the VF-26, other than lacking the overall downforce needed to stake its claim for a more regular billing in Q3. As it stands, it’s missing three or four tenths to comfortably make it there.
The team also struggled in the hot conditions around Miami during the Friday and Saturday sessions, although the gloomier tones of the Sunday skyline helped to mitigate that weakness. Montreal should be cooler, giving Haas the opportunity to put Alpine under scrutiny once more.
That being said, Alpine looks as though it’s growing into the season, and the decision to dispense with a dismal 2025 early on is looking more and more like the correct decision. Haas would be right to be worried about Alpine potentially stealing a march on the rest of the midfield – but it must channel that concern into its own development path.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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