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2025 Japanese Grand Prix/Formula 1/haas/liveries

Haas to race special ‘sakura’ livery at Japanese Grand Prix · RaceFans

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Haas will introduce a variation on its usual livery to mark the start of cherry blossom season at this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix.

The American team has added pink cherry blossom graphics to its VF-25s for the upcoming round at Suzuka.

The Japanese Grand Prix moved to a spring date for the first time last year. The event now coincides with ‘sakura’ – the cherry blossom season. Many trees around the track were in bloom during last year’s race.

Haas has strengthened its ties to Japan since Ayao Komatsu took over as team principal at the beginning of last year. The team signed a technical collaboration deal with Toyota last season.

As part of the Toyota deal, the Japanese manufacturer’s junior drivers have opportunities to test for the team. Ryo Hirakawa drove for them in post-season testing at the end of last year, though he has since joined Alpine as one of its reserve drivers.

The team heads into this weekend’s race after scoring the second-best result in its history in the previous round at Shanghai. Esteban Ocon finished fifth and Oliver Bearman eighth following a spate of post-race disqualifications. The team is sixth in the championship at this early stage in the season.

However Komatsu admitted he has some concerns over the team’s performance this weekend. The season-opening round in Melbourne indicated the VF-25 is not competitive in high-speed corners of the type which dominate Suzuka’s layout.

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“Even though we raced competitively in Shanghai, we know that we still carry a fundamental car issue that was exposed in Melbourne,” he said. “We’re going into this weekend with our eyes wide open to tackle any challenges we might face and aim to get the best out of the VF-25 and our drivers.”

Haas is unlikely to be the only team to run a special livery for this weekend’s race. Red Bull is expected to reveal a special tribute livery for Honda similar to the one it raced at the 2021 Turkish Grand Prix. McLaren was the only team to produce a special livery for this race last year.

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2025 australian grand prix/2025 F1 season/Formula 1/haas/Oliver Bearman

Bearman’s crash adds to problems at Haas as performance puzzles team · RaceFans

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Oliver Bearman’s crash in the first practice session was especially unfortunate for Haas as their car did not live up to the team’s expectations in Australia.

The rookie spun into a barrier at turn 10 after just a dozen laps in the first practice session. The team’s mechanics worked quickly to repair the car for the second practice session, which began two-and-a-half hours after the first ended, but narrowly failed to do so.

“I’m a bit sad to have missed all the running today,” Bearman admitted afterwards. “The guys did a great job to try and get the car back out, we just ran out of time.

“I just had a small mistake in turn 10, which put me a bit wide, and out there, it’s very, very bumpy and I unfortunately lost the car.”

Bearman said that prior to his crash he “really felt confident in the car – maybe too much.”

Haas was rooted to the bottom of the times in both sessions. Esteban Ocon’s best lap of 1’18.034 was six tenths of a second off the next team.

“Today was a pretty difficult day,” team principal Ayao Komatsu admitted afterwards. “It wasn’t the performance we were expecting.

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“We have one indication as to why in FP1, but Ollie crashed so we couldn’t completely get to the bottom of why we were uncompetitive, so we need to make another step tonight and then do the best we can tomorrow.”

Ocon said “it hasn’t been the smoothest day” for the team. “Obviously it’s the first day of the year so it is normal that it goes that way, but we still have more to put together to try and get correct, to try and exploit the maximum out of the car.

“I was still not happy with the balance and how the car felt. We did a step between P1 and P2, but we need more.”

However he believes the route the team need to take with its car tomorrow “is clear for us.”

“We need to try and do that of course and hopefully we can do that in [final practice] and then build on from there,” he said.

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2025 F1 season/haas

Haas expect “massive boost from very first race” with improved VF-25 · RaceFans

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Haas have high hopes for the gains they’ve made with their new car for the 2025 Formula 1 season.

The team’s head of aerodynamics Davide Paganelli said their simulations indicate they have made major strides with the VF-25.

“Our focus was the points of weakness identified in the VF-24,” he explained. “With the help of the performance team, we tried to work on the whole car as a package to be able to solve the issue.

“An indication of this is that we worked a lot on the rear of the car, and particularly the rear wing. I think that we’ve done a really good job on this for 2025.

“We believe the package we’ve designed is a really good one in terms of development. Obviously, we must check if the delivery is what we expect. If we’re able to see on track what we think we’re discovering in the wind tunnel, I think that we can have a massive boost from the very first race.”

Haas moved up three places to seventh in the championship last year, though their form fluctuated noticeably from track to track. Paganelli believes their new car should perform more consistently.

“We’ve tried to design a car that can adapt to different races,” he said, “as one of the weaknesses we had last year was not being able to be able to perform at the same level at circuits with different characteristics.

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“I think that we did a good job in trying to close this kind of gap as well as providing a configuration that is better in hotter races. We know at the beginning of the season we have some hot races, so we should be able to compete.”

Paganelli said the team’s mood is upbeat following the progress they made in the last 12 months since Ayao Komatsu arrived as team principal.

“Last year we grew a lot in terms of design resource and we also gained a lot of confidence that we can definitely do better. The mood in the design office today is absolutely positive, we can feel the energy here. Last season we were able to demonstrate to ourselves and the rest of the grid that we can do a very good job.

“We consider 2024 a success because we came into this season being last in the championship. It was really difficult to be able to deliver something positive with the same resource, but by changing the organisational structure we unlocked the potential of team members, and that was really satisfying.”

The team ran its VF-25 for the first time last weekend at Silverstone, with its new driver Esteban Ocon at the wheel. His team mate, rookie Oliver Bearman, is due to sample the new car for the first time on Monday at the Bahrain International Circuit ahead of next week’s pre-season test.

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2025 F1 season/haas

Haas reveals its new F1 car for 2025 · RaceFans

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Haas has presented its latest car design for 2025 as the team heads into this year’s championship with an all-new driver line-up.

Esteban Ocon has joined the team from Alpine. His team mate is Oliver Bearman, a Ferrari Driver Academy member who is beginning his first full season in F1.

As the team uncovered its livery at F1’s pre-season launch event in London, it also released the first official images of its new VF-25. Ocon drove the car in a shakedown test at a damp Silverstone on Sunday.

Bearman is due to drive the car for the first time when the team conducts another run at the Bahrain International Circuit on Monday next week. The sole, three-day pre-season test for all 10 F1 teams will take place there at the end of next week.

Haas was one of the surprise performers of last season. Having fallen to last in the championship the year before, they rebounded to finish seventh after new team principal Ayao Komatsu took charge.

Team owner and chairman Gene Haas said: “We had a very encouraging year in 2024, so I’m naturally looking forward to seeing further progress made this season with the VF-25.”

“The team really pulled together last year, both on and off-track,” he continued, “and obviously now we have two new drivers in Esteban and Ollie to incorporate into the team and hopefully keep us headed in the right direction. It was exciting to see the developments made last season and I’m trusting that momentum will continue to grow and translate into further performance gains.”

Pictures: 2025 Haas VF-25

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