When it hit the Formula 1 scene, the Haas team seemed like a success story that all incoming teams should try to emulate. Now, however, after some difficult years, Haas says that without the introduction of some severe cost caps, it might not make it in sport.
Haas appeared to be a formidable enemy for the midfield teams from his first season in 2016 through 2018. Where most of the new F1 teams failed at the end of the grid, Haas seemed to find a perfect formula. It came with a lot of money and bought up as many parts as possible, including a strong engineering partnership with Ferrari that propelled the team to fifth place in the championship of the best designers.
However, 2019 was a mess. Nothing on the car seemed to be working properly, and drivers Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean were only able to scrape together just under 28 points over the entire season. The off-track disaster was completely independent of the performance on the track Rich energywhich in theory should have given the team more money, but in reality caused more problems than the money was worth.
And 2020 didn’t look much better. Kevin Magnussen scored the team’s only point in tenth place, and the only reason it doesn’t languish at the bottom of the standings is because Williams is in ruins. Before the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday, both Haas drivers missed the first practice session of the weekend Power supply problems. Both drivers were able to set times in the second session, but both had settled at the bottom of the time sheets, more than two seconds slower per lap than Max Verstappen in the first.
Due to the lack of prize money at the end of the year, Haas is particularly looking forward to the cost caps in Formula 1, which the FIA wants to implement. However, Haas has also signed the latest Concorde deal, which effectively includes the team in the competition for the next five years.
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Günther Steiner, Haas team boss, said the team might not have made it long in the future without these cost caps. Of Motorsport::
I would say it would have been a lot more difficult, and almost impossible, had it not been for the chance to be competitive, and also that spending would not have continued to grow.
[…]
I think the main thing is [Gene Haas] Leaned back and saw that F1 is very powerful when it comes to marketing worldwide as a tool. And for him, it was good for Haas Automation to think about what it has done over the past five years. That was the main reason.
And then, for sure, all the other things like the Concorde deal and equal payouts and the budget trophy that also helped convince him this is a place to stay.
Ultimately, it’s the value of the investment and the promise that things will get a little fairer in the future that keeps Haas going. But if those cost caps don’t prove effective, Haas may not stick with the signing of the next Concorde deal.
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