New Kids On The Block Haas F1 Team and Baku City Circuit Growing Up Together
Mike Arning/HAAS F1 | 20.4.18 | Aktuality
Haas F1 2018
KANNAPOLIS, North Carolina (April 20, 2018) – Haas F1 Team debuted in the FIA Formula One World Championship in 2016, becoming the first American Formula One team since 1986.
Also debuting in 2016 was Baku City Circuit, home to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. These two newbies have grown up together, and the two are set to meet again on April 29 for the third annual Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
The youngest team in Formula One heads to one of the newest tracks in Formula One intent on continuing its disruptive presence. Three races into the 21-race schedule, Haas F1 Team is seventh in the constructors’ standings with 12 points while holding a nine-point advantage over eighth-place Sauber with just a single point separating it from sixth-place Toro Rosso.
Haas F1 Team drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen have taken the pace they displayed in winter testing at Circuit de Barcelona – Catalunya and maintained it through Formula One’s stops in Australia, Bahrain and China. Both drivers have appeared regularly in the top-10 in qualifying, and this has translated to running among the top-10 in grands prix with their Haas VF-18s mixing it up with the likes of Scuderia Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull as they seemingly lead the midfield charge.
The midfield is comprised of Haas F1 Team, McLaren, Renault, Toro Rosso, Sauber, Force India and Williams. This group has always been competitive as it strives for best-of-the-rest status behind the Big Three of Scuderia Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull. But this season has seen the level of competiveness rise to new heights, with the third-year effort from America continuing to raise eyebrows and the height of the midfield.
Baku City Circuit raised the game of Formula One venues when it debuted in 2016. It is a 6.003-kilometer (3.730-mile), 20-turn street course that Grosjean calls “two different circuits in one” and Magnussen claims to be “a mixture of Monza and Monaco.”
Drivers blast down two enormously long straights in a dumbbell-shaped layout that runs counterclockwise. The two main straights include a 2.2-kilometer (1.367-mile) stretch along the promenade and a 1-kilometer (.621-mile) stretch that takes drivers away from Azadliq Square. The Herman Tilke-designed track blends old and new amid these fast straights and slow corners. It winds through a modern, Eastern side where swank hotels and high-end shops reside, to a historic area where the streets are narrow and steep before returning to the mainstraight. A sharp left turn greets drivers at the end of that straight, not too dissimilarly from the Tilke-designed Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, home to the United States Grand Prix. It’s a unique and challenging layout that is augmented by Baku’s notorious winds, which are always prevalent. In fact, City of Winds is the unofficial, but literary, name for Baku.
Baku earned high praise after its inaugural race, with Grosjean calling it “a beautiful city and a beautiful track.” Magnussen echoed those sentiments, saying it was “a pretty cool race with lots of action.”
Action was in abundance in last year’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix. From the onset of the 51-lap race, drivers were bouncing off one another and the walls. And the contact was throughout the field, with dustups between the front-running Mercedes and Scuderia Ferrari drivers, intrasquad battles amongst Force India and Sauber, along with a host of mechanical issues – some self-inflicted – that created a topsy-turvy race before reaching its halfway mark.
Magnussen, in particular, took advantage of the chaos, racing to as high as third before finishing seventh, which ended up being his best result of 2017. Grosjean, meanwhile, rallied from his 16th-place starting spot to finish 13th.
Improvement has been the name of the game for Haas F1 Team in 2018, and the organization plans more of the same in its return to Baku City Circuit. Magnussen looks for his third straight point-paying performance while Grosjean seeks to turn his pace into points for the first time this season.
And just as Haas F1 Team has grown into a points-paying contender at each grand prix, Baku has grown its grand prix into a premier event that contends with Formula One’s most storied venues.
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