Gene Haas hits gas with expansion into Formula 1
AUSTIN, Texas -- In an unremarkable borrowed room atop the Federation Internationale De L’Automobile office, Gene Haas sat above the fray. Above the miserable rain and wind lashing Circuit of the Americas and sending Formula 1 courtiers to their respective hospitality chalets. Above the high-end sports cars sinking into fresh mud in the parking lots outside. Above, for now, the self-propagating cycle of maelstroms that drive politics and news in the most popular form of motor sports on the planet.
It can’t last long.
“Unfortunately, the rain kind of made everybody run, so the paddock has been pretty much empty,” Haas, adorned in a jacket bearing the red and white logo for Haas F1 Team, told USA TODAY Sports. “It would have been nice to meet Bernie once in a while.”
Lawmaker asks education secretary to step down
Haas, co-owner of 2014 Sprint Cup champion Kevin Harvick’s race car at Stewart-Haas Racing, was on an informational and conversational junket to the United States Grand Prix on this weekend in October, hoping to shake hands – including those of series head Bernie Ecclestone - and refresh relationships one last time in person before returning to his corner in his ambitious attempt at starting his F1 team next season.
It hadn’t been as successful as he’d hoped, but he wasn’t discouraged. Plans were in place and progress being made, on checklists and shops in Kannapolis, N.C., Banbury, England, and Parma, Italy, where the first American-based team in nearly three decades was preparing for a 2016 debut in Melbourne, Australia. If he was discouraged or dissuaded easily, Rick Hendrick would have talked him out of the NASCAR business before he ever delved in back in 2002. And he would have taken Ecclestone’s cryptic warnings over this endeavor as a harbinger of ill results and moved on to whatever industrialists can find as outlets for their competitive aspirations and cash.
This is what he wants. And Haas is ready to get on with it.
“We’ve been planning this now for 18 months,” he said. “The sense of urgency is definitely, definitely gotten to a point of ‘We need to get racing.’ So waiting too long is not good. Actually, I find the anticipation in the journey a lot more satisfying than the actual final event, because once the race starts, I have a tendency to want to get that race over with and see where we wind up.”
Haas isn’t entering Formula 1 to revolutionize it. He wants to brand his machine tool company globally, hopes not to use it to sponsor his two cars for long, wants to compete immediately and win eventually. But his outsider approach to competition and austerity could change the nature of the F1 business if his goals come to fruition. That the series continues to languish amid competition disparity and cost explosions perhaps make this an opportune time for a new concept to bud. But that would be an ancillary result, said Haas F1 Team principal Guenther Steiner.
“He’s not trying to be a genius and more clever than anybody,” Steiner told USA TODAY Sports. “He listens to people. We try to keep all the unnecessary stuff out, keep it simple. Keep focused on going racing and not all that other stuff.”
History of failure for U.S.-based teams
Haas’ entry into F1 has the potential to be less complicated and less expensive than that of Carl Haas (no relation) and Roger Penske before him, coming on terms he can exploit, both competitively and financially. Current FIA rules encourage manufacturers through partnerships to provide a host of components for other teams – among them engines and scores of electronic and electrical components – while Penske and Haas were more compelled to manufacture their own or purchase at a premium. Penske’s F1 team, which operated from 1974-76 until costs and the lack of sponsor benefit prompted an ultra-successful transition to North American open-wheel racing, began with the purchase of a car from March and a Cosworth engine before it began building its own components.
“Today’s rules have these factory teams that are compelled to provide engines and certain components to their partner teams and that’s a little bit different today because you’re getting the latest technology, you’re getting the benefit,” Penske, the last American owner to win an F1 race, at the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix, told USA TODAY Sports. “Gene’s a pretty smart guy. What he’s done is said ‘Let me let Ferrari do all the leg work and all the development work and then I’ll get the by-product of that and then I can add my own enhancements to that and hopefully be competitive.’
“I’ll certainly take my hat off to him for taking the step, taking the risk. He’s a tough competitor. You’ve seen what he’s done with (SHR co-owner) Tony (Stewart) and I’m rooting for him with both hands.”
Haas unapologetically asserts his right to benefit from the so-called “customer car” model, and wonders aloud why teams would employ upwards of 400 workers and specialists toiling years for breakthroughs in cost-ineffective minutia at the cost of more than $300 million yearly. While Formula 1, he said, is a step above in terms of financial commitment, the $25 million-$30 million cost for two engines makes it “more expensive than NASCAR but it’s not astronomically more than NASCAR.”
Austerity was a point for Haas, who resuscitated his foundering Sprint Cup team in 2009 after offering half as an equity stake to series champion Stewart. By 2011, Stewart had won his third Cup championship and Harvick his first in 2014 for an organization that has grown to four cars. Haas’ renaissance in stock cars was aided by a technical alliance with 11-time Cup champion Hendrick Motorsports. Similarly, his F1 campaign earned an immediate boost with a partnership with Ferrari, which will provide engines and all but aerodynamics and chassis.
Steiner, a multi-time F1 team executive who helped launch Red Bull’s NASCAR foray, helped make Haas’ connection with Ferrari because of his relationship with former Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali. The organization has upheld the commitment through two changes of leadership because of a desire to align with a team in North America, one of its most fertile markets, Steiner said.
“It’s more or less supported by Ferrari,” Ecclestone said. “So it’s another Ferrari.”
And Ecclestone is fine with that, he said, if it creates another competitive team, although he had actually encouraged Haas to purchase the assets of a failing F1 team. Haas eventually bought a building, which came with a super computer, formerly owned by Marussia, but stuck to his start-up model.
“If you can buy a team which goes under, there’s usually a problem with it,” Steiner said. “You know there’s a problem, but you don’t really know what the problem is.
“We still have to prove that our way works. But we believe in it. Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it. We haven’t shown anything, but we believe in it.”
Setting achievable goals
Haas F1 Team’s equipment will be new, but nondescript – he saved $50,000 by keeping his tractors factory black - with a contractor hired to transport them and set up hospitality buildings.
The team will buy what it can by rule from Ferrari because, he said, “we don’t want to do any of that. If someone is willing to supply it to us, it would be foolish to try and do it yourself. It would take too many years. It would be impossible. I think that’s what tripped up some other teams.
“We’re not here to prove we can out-fancy you here in terms of our colors or equipment.”
Haas doesn’t make bold predictions about the possible success in F1, says he is not emboldened by his recent run of astute business moves, but he seems to keep making them through prudence or providence.
Take his decision to bring Kurt Busch into a fourth car at SHR in 2014, with his own funding. The 2004 Sprint Cup champion has qualified for the Chase both years, finishing 12th and eighth.
“For every success we’ve had, we missed out on a bunch of things, too. It’s kind of the way it goes,” he said.
Haas’ junket over and his presence not required long before Lewis Hamilton won to claim his third title or Sir Elton John performed a post-race show, Haas departed to watch SHR race at Talladega Superspeedway in a key Chase elimination race.
There is no next grand stroke, Haas said. If Haas F1 team is successful, he will have the remainder of his sporting career occupied, he said.
“I think NASCAR has been an incredible run with two championships,” he said. “I think Formula 1 brings that excitement again, that we could do this all over again. If that lasts for ten years, I think anything more than ten years is about as far as I go out. So I got the next ten years covered. Hopefully, we’ll win a couple more NASCAR championships in between and that’ll keep me busy.”
Follow James on Twitter @brantjames
PHOTOS: Key moments from NASCAR's Chase for the Sprint Cup
