Haas recorded the highest number of laps on the first day of Bahrain pre-season testing ahead of 2024 Formula 1 season kick off.
Haas F1 Team duo Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen completed 148 laps in total over the eight hours of track time on the first day of testing in Bahrain, handing the team some sort of achievement despite being the slowest.
That is even more than what Red Bull driver Max Verstappen recorded as he completed 143 laps by himself after choosing to spend the entire day in the driver’s seat and eventually blitzed to the top of the timesheets on the opening day of Bahrain pre-season testing.
It’s common knowledge during test days that lap counts should be the primary focus rather than lap times.
Haas experienced no major problems on Wednesday, and Ayao Komatsu, the new team principal, seemed satisfied with how the squad’s first return to competition in 2024 went.
“For our first day of pre-season testing, overall, I think it was a pretty decent day,.” Komatsu said after the first day of testing.
“It wasn’t perfect, but it was a really decent start. We focused the whole day on long-run tire management, we generated really good data. Both drivers ran a few different strategies, and we can see the results of that.
“We’ve learned quite a lot as a team. I’d say we managed to achieve most of our objectives for the day, which is good. For tomorrow we’ve got another big set of objectives, knowing what we’ve learned from today.
“We have a few operational things to sharpen up as well, just so we run slightly better, but with 148 laps recorded, we now have plenty to build on for Thursday.”
Magnussen took the wheel in the morning as Hulkenberg took over after lunch with each recording 66 and 82 laps respectively. Despite being the slowest drivers on the timing screens—both of them more than four seconds slower than Verstappen’s pace—they were nevertheless upbeat.
“I feel very good. Physically, it was a good morning as it’s always fun getting back into the car after the winter,” said Magnussen. “I think we had a pretty positive morning.
“We focused on long runs and we’re really trying to address the issues that we had last year with the tyres,” he explained of the apparent lack of pace today compared to their rivals.
“That’s going to be our main focus and we’re happy about what we saw this morning, but there’s clearly a lot of work to do. But everyone’s fired up to investigate and learn about this new car.”
Hulkenberg added: “Our afternoon was mainly about high-fuel, long runs. The objective was to learn about the car and try some things with the tyres.
“We know it was our weakness last year so that’s really been the focus today. It was all good and positive, there were no issues on the technical side and with 82 laps on the board, everything was achieved.”
