Haas Formula One team principal Gunther Steiner said he was hopeful all the mandatory crash tests would be completed before Christmas, and on Thursday the team confirmed the tests had been completed successfully.
“We’ve done some preliminary crash test because you don’t do the chassis complete straight away,” Steiner said in Abu Dhabi earlier this month. “You do a part of it.
“Hopefully we pass it, you know, that is the aim. And no, the car will be assembled before [the first test] and this year we assemble it again in Italy, like we did before.
“We didn’t do that last year because it was an existing car. It was the car from 2020 which we just rebuilt that changed a few paths but we are going to assemble it again in Italy, because all the technical people is there and a lot of the parts are made by Dallara.
“So it’s better to be in their facility when we assemble the first car, and then from there we take it to Spain [for the test].”
Ahead of 2021 season, the American squad finished assembling its car in Bahrain ahead of the start of pre-season testing as the chassis was basically unchanged from 2020.
But with a rules overhaul for next season meaning teams will have all-new cars, Haas will finish assembling it in the Dallara factory in Italy before flying to Barcelona for the first of two tests.