Haas needs to improve to compete with other F1 teams. Will it?
For all the teams that took part in this year’s Formula 1 world championship, none really has had more difficulties (apart from Williams) than the American Haas F1 Team. The squad has been in Formula 1 for a short time with 2018 being their banner season. That year, Hass just missed out (to Renault) from finishing in fourth place.
But as in every sport, things can change quickly, and this year that happened to Haas.
On the engineering side, the car couldn’t get enough grip with its new-brand Pirelli tires. Then there were alignment issues with the chassis that could never be addressed completely–despite repeated efforts by the Italian tire manufacturer. It was bad news. With one race left this year, the Haas team stands ninth of ten teams in the Constructor’s Championship.
On the business side, Haas divorced its sponsor, Rich Energy, before the season ended–the culmination of a testy and public spat about which I’ve written on these pages. Now in search of a successor, one option bandied about was that Polish oil company, Orken, would step forward and put fellow patriot Robert Kubica in the test and reserve position for next season. But that possibility was quashed when Orken and Kubica picked rival Racing Point instead of the American squad.
The situation is reminiscent of what happened earlier in the year when it was thought that Italian car manufacturer Maserati would sponsor the team with an Italian driver. It would be a companion effort to what Alfa Romeo did when they took over as the main sponsor of the Swiss Sauber team. It’s not clear why the deal fell through, but the bottom line is that it never came to pass.
Steiner talks about Haas (photo, Motorsport)
With the 2019 season coming to an end this weekend in Abu Dhabi, Haas manager Guenther Steiner is glad that his team can focus its research and development on 2020.
“Yes, I would say there is a silver lining,” Steiner said recently. “We started to react during the summer break to work on the 2020 car–to try to avoid the mistakes we’ve made this year. We don’t want to repeat them. For sure it will be tough next year having 22 races for the first time. On the other side, the shorter winter testing and, then, no in-season testing will help a little bit with having more races. It’s a bit less travel and less work for testing. The team will be challenged a lot. Team personnel will be at a limit.”
“As always, the big teams will always have an advantage,” Steiner continued. They just have more resources and more people to develop the 2021 car to the new regulations, while at the same time developing a 2020 car. The budget cap comes in place in 2021. In the first years, I don’t see a big difference in how the pecking order between the teams stacks up: there will still be the big three and then the rest. We know that. Hopefully, the gap closes a little bit to the big ones over time. For sure, we will try to do our best with whatever we have got to develop a good 2021 car.”
On the driving side of the team, Romain Grosjean, whom many thought would be replaced, will return along with Dane Kevin Magnussen, who will finish his second season of a two-year contract.
Grosjean reflects on 2019 and looks to the future (photo, F1i)
“Obviously, we had three years where we improved each season,” surmised Grosjean. “This year – our fourth – it has been a disappointing season in terms of performance. That doesn’t mean that all the work we’ve done behind the scenes isn’t great. As I’ve said many times, the team has been working very well and we’ve got the maximum–if not more than the maximum–out of the car most of the time.”
Grosjean didn’t sugarcoat problems with the car. “Obviously, we’ve had a difficult car, but that’s really how the team has proved itself this year, in terms of how we’ve worked with the car and worked around the problems we’ve had. I think we’ve had a much more difficult car than, say, in 2017. I think we’ve handled things much better and gotten more out of it. Also, it’s allowed us to be much better prepared for next year.”
Whether CEO Gene Haas will find another sponsor or go it alone is anybody’s guess. But one thing is for sure: American Haas has only one way to go — up. Time will tell if it does.
