Haas VF-25 uncovered: A soft evolution, albeit with a number of fascinating features

Haas have wasted no time in releasing images of their 2025 challenger following the F1-75 live event that took place at the O2, in London, with pictures and video of the VF-25 having already circulated on the internet from their shakedown at Silverstone, on Sunday in any case.

As you’d expect, for a team that likely has the least resources of any on the grid and still has to balance the design of this car, its development and focus on the design of an entirely new generation of car for 2026, the VF-25 is not a revolutionary machine. However, it does have numerous interesting solutions and some noteworthy design aspects for us to dig into.

Breaking with tradition

Haas have traditionally preceded Ferrari in the launch cycle and previously that’s resulted in them giving away some of the hardware changes that the Scuderia might also be making for the given season.

However, they look set to buck that trend in 2025 if the rumours coming out of Maranello are accurate, as whilst the Prancing Horse are expected to make the change to pull rod front suspension, that isn’t the case for Haas, with the team retaining a push-rod front suspension layout.

Meanwhile, the rest of the car takes the concepts introduced during 2024 and optimises them further, with the overbite-style sidepod inlet and modified bodywork introduced at the British Grand Prix the basis for this year’s design, whilst the new front wing and nose introduced at the Dutch Grand Prix is refined further still.

The updated nose featured a longer tip section, as does the VF-25, whilst the front wing ditched the winglet-style slot gap separators, replacing them with the more conventional horse-shoe style brackets, which have been retained for 2025.

Architecturally the rest of the front wing is very similar to that updated specification too, as it features the wave-like diveplane, semi-detached flap tips at the endplate juncture and the outwash winglets stacked atop them.

However, the team have looked to open up more room at the rear corner of the assembly to assist with outwash generation, as there’s now a cut out in the lower corner of the endplate.

As already mentioned, the sidepod solution seen on the VF-25 has the same design features as the updated bodywork introduced last season, with the team having moved to an overbite-style inlet, with an appearance that resembles McLaren’s solution, albeit with a wider inlet and without the overhanging wing section.

Given the lack of major changes to the exterior bodywork it’s likely that the team have reorganised the internal packaging to optimise flow through the sidepod, in order to improve cooling efficiency.

A new, or should that be a returning feature, on the VF-25 is the wing mirror support and surround package, with this sort of design famously popularised by Ferrari in 2017, which led to a wide array of solutions appearing on their rivals’ cars thereafter.

Teams have been less focused on this with the current generation of cars but we have started to see more complex interpretations arriving, with the ones seen on the MCL39 a good example of this.

However, Haas are the first team to head back to more of a total surround-style solution, in order to reduce the inefficiencies created by the mirror housing itself, with winged surfaces mounted above and below the housing.

The open tip section of each of these wing profiles will undoubtedly shed vortices that will improve flow along the boundary of the sidepod’s bodywork.

Meanwhile, the vertical stays have been retained beside the cockpit and below the wing mirror housing in order to provide aerodynamic support for the inlet below and flow moving over the sidepod.

The remainder of the downsloping sidepod bodywork and the engine cover are largely unchanged, including the cooling louvres on the shoulder section, albeit shown with only two in the render, whereas they have numerous options at their disposal depending on how much heat needs to be rejected.

The horn-like winglets beside the airbox are also retained, whilst the engine cover still remains shark fin-less, as the team have kept the louvred openings on the spine of the engine cover.

The floor is also pretty much a carryover at this stage too, with the main features, such as the SIS surround, floor kicks and edge wing all very similar in profile to last year’s designs.

One of the more interesting features of the VF-25 may seem similar to a design used by Mercedes last season at first glance.?However, given the various geometries in play it suggests that they may have only taken inspiration from it and moreover it might share more DNA with a solution first seen on the Aston Martin, at Monaco, in 2023. It’s a solution that some of the other teams did replicate but has slowly slipped into obscurity since.

In all three instances we can see that the tip section is extended down over the mainplane section of the endplate, which allows the rear cut out to form further forward, rather than the tip section merging into the endplate, as was the original intent when the regulations were conceived.

This dog-eared approach, albeit slightly different in all three cases, goes to show that even with a very prescribed set of regulations to follow the designers are able to interpret them in different ways.

Especially when we consider that most of the grid, including Haas, employed another semi-detached flap section design last season, that was first introduced by Alpine, at Monaco, in 2023.

In that instance a metal support bracket divides the two sections and enables the designers to reconfigure the rest of their design, including the arched mainplane and endplate juncture, the shape of the tip section and the endplate cut out.

Regardless of this new design’s lineage, Haas have clearly adapted it to suit the rest of their rear wing DNA, with the designers overhauling the endplate cut out, with a much larger section removed in order to improve the wing’s efficiency.

Meanwhile, the design of the tip section has also been optimised, with the shape and curvature altered to improve how all of the flow structures that converge on this region will perform.

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