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Haas appears unlikely to complete its brake manufacturer switch ahead of this weekend's Russian grand prix.
After complaining throughout 2016 and now into 2017 about the feeling from his Brembo-supplied brakes, Romain Grosjean got to try the equipment of rival manufacturer Carbon Industries at the recent Bahrain test.
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It is believed Haas has been reluctant to make the switch before now, because Brembo is a long-time and trusted partner of the American team's technical partner Ferrari. Grosjean said of the Brembo versus Carbon Industries comparison: "They feel very similar."
"But we can see from the telemetry that a few things are already working better," he is quoted by Auto Motor und Sport. "They behave more in the way I like at the end of the braking process." At the same time, the Frenchman admitted Brembo has been making recent progress. "There was an update in China," he said, "and since then it has worked better. We had to wait a year and half to get it."
Switching to Carbon Industries would not be simple for Haas. It is not just the braking material that changes, but also the surrounding equipment and then tuning the complex brake-by-wire and MGU-K integration. Grosjean admitted: "We should be completely sure that we are improving. "We cannot sacrifice practice sessions to continue working on brakes," he said.
Brakes aside, Haas is having a good second season to date, even if the high points finishes are not yet consistently flowing. "Renault is faster than us in qualifying," said Grosjean, "but we have the better race pace."
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Sounds like quite a hassle to switch supplier. But if they can get their brakes working that'd be great for Haas, that and the reliability are two things I think could make them lose against e.g Force India and Williams.
Would be interesting to see which suppliers the teams get their various parts from. I know Ferrari get brakes from Brembo, Engine pistons from Mahle and a few things like that, but the rest is generally less apparent.