The Haas F1 team was born in a North Carolina steakhouse (I like to think it was Sagebrush in Mooresville, but it probably wasn’t there) where Gene Haas met Guenther Steiner for the first time in 2010. “USF1 and Ken Anderson kind of lit the fuse of my interest in Formula 1, I went over there a few times and had a look” Haas admits. “Ken asked me to get involved but I felt that I didn’t have the time to commit to it. But I started to follow Formula 1 from that point on and I used to do open wheel racing when I was in high school so I knew a bit about it.”
The failure of USF1 served as a lesson for many considering an entry into the top level of world motor racing and certainly put more than a few investors off getting involved in Formula 1 but it was as a direct result of that failure that Haas found himself in that steakhouse. Half a decade later and the Haas VF-16 took to the track for the first time in a private filming day in Spain. It was to be a busy few days for the man who built his fortune designing and building user friendly machine tools.
Barely 48 hours after the official launch of the new Haas car, it was announced that his NASCAR team, Stewart-Haas would make a shock switch from Chevy to Ford in 2017. Rumours had been flying around for weeks that it would be Ganassi who would change name plate but nobody had linked SHR to the blue oval.
“I think it was just a business decision, it brings stability and give us a vision for the future” Haas explains of the switch. “Ford has a long term vision of what they want to do in racing and parallels what we want to do. GM has been great to us over the years and we were not really looking to change but the synergies that Ford brought to the table we just could not pass that up.” With Fords global motorsport programme going through a significant change at present it must be wondered what those synergies are, could Haas for example move into the WEC with the new GTE Ford programme or even bring Ford back into Formula 1? Haas smiles and refuses to be drawn only stating that “I think running at Le Mans would be great, the Indy 500, Le Mans, Daytona and Monaco too. Those are all big races, I like the idea of doing that.”
Ford had been linked to a Formula 1 return in 2014 with the stillborn Cosworth power unit, and there have been suggestions that in future Haas F1 could morph into a Ford works outfit. Haas will not rule out working with the right partners in future (as he did with Tony Stewart in NASCAR) but stresses that Haas F1 is in Formula 1 for the long term.
While it is very early days for his new team in F1 Gene Haas has been spending a fair amount of time in the Formula 1 paddock learning about the new world his organisation has joined. “It is all kinda similar, its not totally foreign but everything is a little different, open wheel car racing is fundamentally different to stock car racing. But the speeds of the F1 cars are incredible” he explains.
It might be expected that one of the biggest differences between NASCAR and Grand Prix racing is the budget required to compete credibly but surprisingly Haas is not overly concerned with the cost at all. “The cost of running a four car team in Sprint Cup and a two car team in Formula 1 is about the same. Ferrari has a budget of $400m but some of the smaller teams do it on $60-$70m a year. Its the same in Cup, the average cost there is about $15m per car plus the driver, but there used to be the start and park teams who did it for $5m” he reveals.
Indeed at a time when many in the paddock are complaining about the cost of power units and even suggesting dumbed down ‘budget engines’ Haas takes a perhaps surprising stance; “when you consider the performance and complexity of these cars and the money you have to pay for the engines and what goes into them, its not a bad deal.” Haas is no stranger to buying his power from a external supplier, for years in NASCAR he has sourced his V8’s from Hendrick Motorsports but in 2017 SHR will use Roush Yates Fords.
With the design and build of the VF-16 well underway in 2015 Haas had find someone to drive it (or indeed two someones), and there were immediately rumours of big names from NASCAR jumping ship with Danica Patrick topping the rumour mill with the soon to retire Jeff Gordon and occasional Indycar runner Kurt Busch also mentioned frequently. But the reality is none of them would qualify for the superlicence required to race in F1 and Haas had to look elsewhere. One of its drivers Gutierrez, a works Ferrari driver was not a huge shock considering the close links between Haas and the Italian company, the other driver, Grosjean was also logical, the underrated Swiss (who races under a French flag) was without doubt the best available.
“The drivers at the top in F1 are extremely expensive, but by and large the salaries are comparable between NASCAR and F1” Haas reveals. “That said the Cup drivers have to work twice as hard and the races are longer and Romain knows that!”
Having a team that races in both NASCAR and Formula 1 will lead to inevitable suggestions of drivers switching series in a guest capacity, not least from the drivers themselves. Haas admits that this is almost a certainty. “Tony Stewart wants to come to all these races he loves this stuff. Kurt Busch is very keen to drive a Formula 1 car and I know Romain is interested in the stock car so it would be interesting to work out a swap. The talent these guys have mean that they could do it, I think Kurt Busch could drive the Formula 1 well, and Romain in NASCAR. I think it might be easier for Kurt though, the thing about stockcars is that they are not very good cars, they are hard to drive, the are very heavy, the power level is the same but there is not much downforce. You need a mentality to be able to drive in those packs, the F1 guys are used to driving round by themselves and trying not to hit someone. In Cup you are almost mandated to hit someone (Haas points out that is a joke, “it is not mandatory just extremely likely!”).”
But it is that difference between the cars that Haas describes as the biggest difference, and in some ways the hardest thing to get used to. “Formula 1 is on a much higher level in terms of technology as NASCAR limits the technology. We have just got fuel injection in Cup, we have steering boxes from cars out of the 1940’s things like that. NASCAR is trying to keep the cars simple but the problem with that is some of that stuff like those steering boxes do not even exist anymore in production cars.” It seems that he is one of a growing number in NASCAR who would like to see the next generation of Sprint Cup car feature more modern technology (see Stockcar Engineering magazine for more of that).
The different styles of politics and governance between NASCAR and Formula 1 is also a stark contrast for Haas. It is clear that Haas is somewhat unimpressed by some elements of Formula 1’s current set up, highlighting the organisation of a F1 commission meeting in Geneva during the second day of pre-season testing in Barcelona. “I don’t think having someone fly to Geneva during the first test just for a 1.5 hour meeting is good. They don’t seem to utilise the teams time efficiency to say the least” he complains. When you realise that the time it would have taken to travel to the meeting was longer than the duration of the meeting itself you can see his point, especially as most of the attendees also had to travel from Barcelona.
In the USA the France family have controlled NASCAR since the very first meeting and foundation of that organisation during a meeting in North Wilkesboro, NC (not as often claimed at a certain hotel in Daytona Beach). While in Formula 1 the sport has been controlled in the modern era largely by Bernie Ecclestone jointly with the FIA. “I think Bernie is a benevolent dictator, the France family is more like an aristocracy” Haas explains, his position is unique as he deals with both on a regular basis. “Bernie is the man that everyone goes to if they need something, my point of view is that Formula 1 would be worse off without him. The way Bernie works is to have a little bit of democracy. Where the Frances autocratically tell you how it is going to be, Bernie will ask your opinion and then sometimes you get to vote on it, in NASCAR until very recently you didn’t get to vote on it. NASCAR is changing a little bit at the moment though with a bit more of that democracy coming in. But in NASCAR the structure is clear, in F1 you have Bernie and you have got the FIA and I don’t know how that all works yet, (a mischievous voice from the sidelines interjects – “nor do they” – the culprit will remain nameless) but that is what it is.”
The new approach of the Haas team, in terms of car development, team structure and general attitude is likely to have a more profound impact on Formula 1 than many realise. Its low cost approach of maximising the rules in terms of build it or buy it has lowered the bar in terms of entry requirements for other new teams and is known to have caught the eye of a number of other prospective entrants as well as a few of the current teams.
