Categories: CircuitsF1 News, Reports and Race Results

Haas expects Austin to survive

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Gene Haas believes the United States Grand Prix will remain at Circuit of the Americas in 2016.

The race at the Austin venue is in doubt following the decision from the State of Texas to reduce its funding for the event from $25million to $19.5m after a review of its impact on the local area. Haas will have his own team entering F1 for the first time this year and he believes the race at COTA has still been too successful to be dropped.

"There are always these concerns but it's a beautiful track, they have invested a lot of money so I don't think they are going to scrap it," Haas is quoted as saying by Autosport. "It brings a lot of money into the city of Austin in taxes.

"Maybe the financial formula changes a little bit but I can't imagine why they wouldn't want to have an event like that. No matter what happens it's a beautiful track and it will survive. I cannot imagine that track not being used."

And Haas is confident F1 still has a foothold in North America from which it can work on expanding, regardless of Austin's future.

"They have talked about having a venue in Anaheim, California and in New Jersey. We've got one in Mexico City and one in Canada. The question is will there be three races in North America or four? It won't be like there are no races in North America."

At present the United States Grand Prix remains on the 2016 F1 calendar subject to agreement with the promoter.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.