Gene Haas believes Mercedes “killed what Formula 1 is about” because their dominance made the sport “boring”.
The American is preparing for his self-proclaimed team to contest its sixth season in F1, but after promising early years they have slipped to last place.
Finances have become an important issue for Haas F1, to the point where they decided not to update their 2020 car for economic reasons due to the health pandemic, while drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen were sacrificed for it late last year Way for commercially effective rookies Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin.
Currently under quarantine in England. Can’t wait to get to work 
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Haas has formed an alliance with Ferrari, is a customer team of the Italian giants and now operates a factory near Scuderia headquarters in Maranello.
However, the 68-year-old from Ohio believes any teams that don’t benefit from Mercedes are at a distinct disadvantage. The German manufacturer made Formula 1 so one-sided because of the seven consecutive world championships its own team has won.
“In 2020, when Ferrari cut power, it was pretty obvious that all Ferrari-powered cars were underperforming compared to Mercedes, Honda and Renault,” Haas told Racer.
“Our boat is tied to the Ferrari ship. So if they drive slowly, we will drive even more slowly. I don’t think you can do much about it.
“We have no control over the parts we receive from Ferrari. We believe Ferrari can fix the problem, and Ferrari not only has that problem, but Honda and Renault too – all of them are deficient in the Mercedes engine.
“They built an extremely powerful, long-lasting, fuel-efficient engine that no other team could come close to.
“For me, what Formula 1 is all about is really amazing. More power for Mercedes to dominate so much of the thing, but who wants to go to a race when you know who’s going to win every damn race there is? It’s just getting boring. “
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– Haas F1 Team (@ HaasF1Team) February 22, 2021
Haas also expanded the decision not to upgrade his car in 2020, believing disrupting the calendar wouldn’t make it worthwhile.
“I’ve always talked to the drivers and I think we spent between $ 20 million and $ 40 million a year on these updates in 2018-2019 and every time I talked to the drivers it was as if it hadn’t done anything! ‘Said Haas. “Why are we spending all this money on updates?
“One of the things that we eliminated pretty quickly was doing all of these updates because I was pretty confident we weren’t going to be racing [in 2020]. At best I thought we were going to do four or five races, so bringing all of these updates for a very short season wouldn’t work.
“But in the end we did a lot of races. We didn’t bring any updates per se – and I’m not sure who brought a lot of updates – but from a practical point of view they didn’t seem like it really improved the car a lot. “
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