Haas: an American rookie driver was never an option

Gene Haas, owner of the new Haas F1 Team, has said that the choice of an experienced driver was the only way to go to achieve success.

There had been expectations that the first American team in Formula One since 1986 would prioritise an American driver in a race seat for their début season the sport in 2016, but Tuesday's announcement of Romain Grosjean signalled that Haas is putting success above everything as he prepares to enter Grand Prix competition.

"We had a lot of pressure to hire an American driver, but the reality is that a rookie driver with a rookie team is not a good fit. Our primary purpose here is to show that as an American manufacturer we can compete in the most difficult, competitive series in the world in car racing and that's Formula One.

"In order to achieve that goal our direction was to do whatever it takes. We're not here to sit there and say 'Hey we as Americans can do it the American way', our goal here is to race competitive teams and bad basically whatever it takes to get the car on the grid with the right people is what we're looking for.

"With Romain, the difference was that there's only 20 drivers that are current right now driving Formula One right now, so he fits that bill quite perfectly. We were kind of surprised - at least I'm a little surprised - that we could have got a driver with the experience that he brings to the team because it's going to be a real challenge and he's going to be working a lot harder than he thinks that he's going to be!

“We were looking for an experienced driver and Romain was one of several candidates," Haas continued. "He’s been in Formula One for many years, he’s been an excellent driver for team Lotus.

"Just the maturity of experience - there's always theory and then there's actual experience. When you start out as a race car driver you have a tendency to be a bit aggressive so hopefully with Romain his maturity will lend itself towards us being able to progress as a team.

“I reviewed a lot of video of his driving styles. One thing that was very impressive is the fact that he’s scored points almost every season and that’s really our primary goal here is to be able to score points.

"I think as a piece of the puzzle he’s going to have a lot of work to do, he’s going to be our lead driver, we’re going to depend heavily on him to help us with our strategies with the car, with the race tracks and just the learning of the whole operations of an F1 team."

For Haas, Grosjean is a key part in making his Formula One venture economically and commercially viable so that it can sustain itself long term.

"He's a bright young person so I think that's going to help a lot as far as promoting our machine tool brand in Europe. Obviously he's French-Swiss nationality and those are both very important countries to our business so we're looking forward to him representing our products over there and that will open and I'm sure that will open up marketing opportunities both here in the US and in Europe."

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