Q&A with Haas F1 Team owner Gene Haas

Ahead of its F1 debut in 2016, Haas F1 Team owner Gene Haas sat down with the media in Austin to discuss a variety of topics surrounding the sport and next year's plans

Do you feel like you’re now in the final countdown?

“We’ve been counting down for a whole year now! There’s a lot of anticipation, we’re very excited about next year but it’s getting to the point where we need to go race. Let’s get it over with, let’s do it.”

Do you feel ready or is there a fair bit that still needs doing before next season?

“Well I think because we had such a long lead time as opposed to other start-up teams we were able to develop some real critical relationships that helped us tremendously. When we first started out we had a whole different racing model where we were going to do everything out of Kannapolis but as time went on we found out things were going to be more difficult to do it that way.

“So we went with what we considered to be a better model and so we were very fortunate to find some partners that were willing to help us. We had a few good luck things. We found the facility in Banbury which was basically an ex-Formula One shop. So going forward we just kind of adapted.”

You’ve been very successful in NASCAR, do you feel there is a big difference between NASCAR and F1?

“To be very, very honest, no. I really feel that being in this garage - I’ve spend most of my time in Formula One in the garage, as in NASCAR - they’re both very similar. Everything is a little bit rearranged in terms of where the furniture is but I think Formula One and NASCAR race exactly the same.”

Will Romain Grosjean be your main driver next season?

“Oh yes, exactly. He’s going to be our senior driver, we’re going to depend upon his experience to help us set-up the cars, to explain the tracks to us, help with strategy … I think that’s all really critical because you can’t really do that without experience.”

And you will announce your second driver in Mexico?

“Mexico City on Friday night we will announce our driver.”

But he has F1 experience too…

“He’s a Ferrari reserve driver, maybe you can connect the dots!”

Excited to be able to announce that as his home race and build the buzz a bit more? Because I imagine having a North American driver is going to be very important for you.

“It’s all going to be very important, it all kind of connects together in terms of not only the drivers but sponsorships. It’s a very sound business model, so ultimately when we start racing next year we want to have business partners to be part of our team.”

You were talking with Carlos Slim…

“Now you’re mentioning names!”

Would it be possible to have his commercial support for next year?

“I’d rather not comment on that until we announce the driver and then we can comment on all that going forward.”

Hoping to inspire other American team owners to come in to Formula One?

“I’d love to have other American teams come in to the sport, it would be nice. I think Roger Penske was there before and then also Dan Gurney was involved in the sport. So I think it would be great to have another American team come on board. If we can get Rick Hendrick to come on board I think he would be great for Formula One. I would love that.”

Did you get all the people you wanted for the team?

“I think that’s an in process development where people come available. As a result of our relationship with Ferrari and then hiring Grosjean we’re starting to notice that we’re attracting better personnel, more experienced personnel, so I think those relationships are helping.”

When will the Banbury factory be up and running?

“It’s actually finished now. We’ve spent the better part of this year updating it, remodelling it and so it’s basically where we want it to be and it’s ready to go.”

You must be excited to enter the sport but do you get concerned about some of the stories surrounding Formula One about complaints from teams and Bernie talking about engines not being good enough and bringing in a new power unit regulation?

“Well I’ll tell you there’s a whole lot of drama going on in Formula One! It seems to me it’s been a little bit worse this year than it was a couple of years ago when they though they were going to lose some of the back teams. Now we’re talking about losing some of the front teams which is even worse. That’s not good, I certainly would hope that Red Bull stays in the sport because I think the sport needs Red Bull more than anything.

“Unfortunately I’m like you, I’m just watching. There seems like a lot of drama has come about about the engine, the V6 turbo hybrid has caused a lot of issues. But at the same time I think that Formula One needs to be cutting edge technology. I think this engine package actually gives challenges to engineers, something new to work on. It is more in line with what today’s production cars are than say just a standard pushrod V8 or something like that. So I think there’s two ways of looking at it.

“The unfortunate part was that they took a big gamble when they went with that engine and unfortunately it hurt some teams really badly.”

Are you in favour of engine manufacturers keeping 32 tokens to develop next season?

“Well they do seem to have these strategy meetings where they talk about that. Ultimately there are timing issues, if one engine is under performing compared to another engine then every team is going to want the better engine. So how long can a team survive with an engine that’s a little bit off from their competition? We’ve seen that for the last couple of years and it did seem to cause a lot of problems.

“Now I’m sure that Honda, Renault and Ferrari have made a tremendous effort to keep up with Mercedes and I think they’re going to get there but if you wind up losing too many customers you could end up going out of business in that process. It’s a real quandary. It would be better to have an engine from say a third party manufacturer, you could wind up with say a Toyota engine or a Hyundai engine if they had more of those manufacturers willing to develop these engines but the costs are so high.

“I think in NASCAR we have the same issue where we have Ford, Toyota and Chevrolet all basically helping develop these engines with the teams and it would be good if they could have that more in Formula One to offset some of those development costs because you can’t really develop those engines on your own.”

“I think quite frankly a lot of teams just waste a lot of money. They hired way too many people, they got a little bit too much overhead … you know, we were very frugal."

You’re coming in with a pretty bold budget. We’ve seen huge spending from Mercedes, Ferrari and the big teams. Are you hoping this budget plan you have coming in is going to change the game a bit in terms of how teams come in to F1 and run their teams?

“Well if we can come in and show you can run a Formula One team on a reasonable amount of money that certainly should be beneficial for everybody. But keep in mind that most of the other teams developed everything themselves. They build everything from suspensions to power steering racks to hydraulic motors. I think they just spend huge amounts of money trying to develop things that maybe to a fan aren’t that important. Like, who cares how your power steering rack is built or whatever? We’re here to race cars, we’re not here to necessarily want to build them from the ground up. I mean, we have to do that, there are certain things that we have to comply with and we’re doing that but to try to do it all I think just consumes huge amounts of money.

“I think quite frankly a lot of teams just waste a lot of money. They hired way too many people, they got a little bit too much overhead … you know, we were very frugal. We don’t just spend money because someone says you need to spend money. Someone said ‘Well you need at least 250 people to run a team’ and it’s like, well, who said that? We’re only going to have the number of people we need, we’re only going to spend the money we need to and we’re not going to waste a lot of money.

“For example we ordered our haulers from Iveco and it’s like ‘Well we’re going to have to have custom paints and all that stuff’, and I was saying ‘I want to have a black colour’ and they said ‘Well, what shade of black?’ I want it black! I just want the standard black it comes with! You get in to this mentality that everything has to be custom and I think starting from the simplest things to the most complex things if you just stay to the basics you can save huge amounts of money.”

So is wanting the trucks black for the livery? Is black the base livery?

“Well that’s for the trucks. The car will have some black in it hopefully and it will have a couple of other colours in there too. I just want to keep things simple. I’m sure we could have added $50,000 to the price of each one of our trucks to have it custom painted with pinstriping and stuff but ours are going to be black.”

When you look back at the last two years is the worst behind you or is the worst yet to come?

“Well the thing about racing is the journey is more satisfying than the end, I think. So hopefully we never get to the end and every year we will do a bit better and learn a little bit more. Within ten years you’ll be so established in Formula One they’ll wonder how the sport ever got along without you.”

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