Haas team has impressed in F1
Sunday’s U.S. Grand Prix is chance for a race on home soil
AUSTIN, Texas — Gene Haas heard the snickers, shook off the doubters and ignored the suggestion that he didn’t know what he was doing.
Looking up at his name in bold letters above the Haas F1 team tent in the paddock this week at the United States Grand Prix, it’s easy to allow him a few moments of self-congratulation heading into his team’s “home” race this weekend at Circuit of The Americas.
“Everybody made it sound like we were clueless getting into Formula One, that we’d be bumbling idiots. The Europeans were going to teach us a lesson,” Haas said. “I think when we showed up and were prepared with a competitive car that scored points, it set a very high bar. … People didn’t think we could do it.”
The Formula One season has been dominated by Mercedes and the duel between teammates Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. But the American rookie outfit has been one of the surprise stories from the rest of the grid.
An industrialist with roots in NASCAR and North Carolina, Haas jumped into Formula One with a flourish. His team has 28 points in its maiden season, all of them scored by veteran French driver Romain Grosjean. While far from the top, it’s also well above the bottom with a chance to climb during the final four races of the season.
Sunday’s race will be a chance for Haas F1 to wave the flag in front of American fans, too, during F1’s only U.S. stop.
“There is some pride for having an American flag on this car,” Grosjean said.
Haas F1 is the first American-led team on the grid since 1986 when Carl Haas (no relation) of Newman/Haas Racing fame, and Teddy Mayer ran the Haas Lola team for two years. For Gene Haas, the road getting here wasn’t easy. It actually crosses two continents, as the team is split between a design base in North Carolina and racing operations in England.
Haas was first granted his F1 team license in April 2014. The initial goal was to be racing in 2015. That proved to be too ambitious, so Haas and team principal Guenther Steiner took aim at 2016. Powered by a Ferrari engine, Haas debuted with an impressive first testing session, then took a step back when engine problems kept them off the track.
“A lot of people lost sleep over that. That was not easy having to sit off the track and watching the other teams go round and round,” said No. 2 Haas driver Esteban Gutierrez.
Said Haas: “We broke a lot of stuff.”
The problems were fixed by the first race when Grosjean finished sixth in Australia and took two more top-10 finishes over the next three races. The success proved hard to maintain in a sport where the development of the car is a constant throughout the season. Haas has only one other top 10 finish this season, none since the British Grand Prix in July.
Haas F1 got a boost two weeks ago in Japan when both cars qualified in the top 10 for the first time. But that came with a rookie mistake: teams that make stage three of qualifying have to start the race on their qualifying tires, forcing a change in pit strategy from one stop to two, and they finished out of the points.
Still, the qualifying performance raised hopes for more points over the final four races. The top 10 finishers in each race score points.
“We finished seven times in 11th,” Steiner said. “It’s about time we finish four times 10th.”
Grosjean left the former Lotus team to join the Americans, and Haas credits him with being a steady hand in the car all season.
Haas won’t commit to a driver lineup for 2017. He understands American fans want an American driver but suggested that’s not an option any time soon.