More Haas, more speed?
Overly ambitious plans and a strange reveal of its 2019 F1 car aside, Haas looks likely to continue its impressive streak
by Maurice Hamilton
THE new F1 season kicked off in February with a cluster of car launches. The rst of cial engagement was a strange affair from beginning to end, since it was purely a reveal of the Haas team’s new colours on last year’s car.
The Royal Automobile Club (RAC) in London’s Pall Mall was a curious choice of venue. Centrally located and regally imposing it may be, but the RAC headquarters applies rules from what might be considered a bygone era (as the RAC arguably has every right to do with a nine-month membership wait before acceptance and asking you to part with £4 000 [about R73 000] to join, followed by an annual fee of a mere £1 776 [R32 500]).
The club’s dress code for men stipulates: “Jacket (suit, blazer or sports jacket) and fully buttoned-fronted collared shirt tucked in with tailored trousers, corduroys, chinos or moleskins.” Being of a certain age, I sympathise with the desire in certain quarters to maintain standards. But from a practical point of view, I can’t remember the last time I wore a suit – sorry, I should say The Suit – to a full-blown F1 car launch, never mind the reveal of a spray job. Any thought about travelling from deepest Sussex to London for the event was left hanging along with The Suit. Besides, the occasion would be broadcast online.
What a mini-disaster that turned out to be. Apart from the obvious dearth of an audience in the club’s elegant but echoing atrium, the reveal started off badly when no one seemed to know from which end to begin removing the cover. Driver interviews were conducted with Kevin Magnussen’s back to the camera, which was probably just as well because there wasn’t much the poor guy could say about the overall appearance, apart from it looking “cool”.
Apparently, there was some white within the mainly black and gold colour scheme to stop us immediately declaring a resemblance to Lotus liveries from the past, which is a bit like me trying to avoid accusations of plagiarising an entire chapter from a bestseller by changing a couple of commas to semi-colons.
When taking onboard the overall effect of the livery and its principal purpose, a more signi cant point had to be its relevance in connection with a bold claim from William Storey, CEO of Rich Energy, the team’s new title sponsor. Storey said his energy drinks company is going to challenge Red Bull commercially, which is odd when his brand name is not jumping at you from either supermarket shelves or the bodywork of what looks like a modern John Player Special. Whereas, by uncomfortable comparison, the dark blue car from Milton Keynes is undeniably a Red Bull.
None of this is really relevant when compared with how the Haas VF-19, the eventual bearer of Storey’s brand, performs on the racetrack. Pushing the hype (no energy-drink pun intended) aside, the thing that really matters is the ability of Haas to continue punching so impressively above its weight even if the aim to leap from a very creditable fth in last year’s championship to challenge Red Bull seems a touch ambitious.
The coming season, and those to follow, will also be a perfect opportunity for Storey to nail implications his company appears to have little substance. Such scurrilous suggestions are triggered by experience of the many previous dubious enterprises latching onto the global F1 bandwagon.
Speaking of which – and returning to the last time I wore The Suit, albeit an earlier double-breasted model with wide lapels, to an F1 function – it might have been a trip to a Paris nightclub in December 1979 to see the reveal of the 1980 Lotus.
It was a spectacular affair, the Lotus 81 with Mario Andretti onboard being lowered from the ceiling. Andretti looked a touch anxious, as well he might have been. The car was in the colours of Essex Petroleum, a company that bought and sold oil without actually handling a drop of it. Essex had just become Lotus’ title sponsor and would remain so for 18 months until the owner, David Thieme, was arrested and held for 13 days on charges of nancial irregularity that never stuck. He disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived.
That Paris launch and subsequent extraordinary extravaganzas in London’s Royal Albert Hall were actually little more than vanity projects for Thieme. The same thought intruded brie y while watching the rather strange Haas reveal in London.