Haas won’t take on more car development for ‘a few years’

2016 F1 season

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Haas does not intend to move closer to building its own Formula One car for at least a few more years according to team principal Guenther Steiner.

Formula One’s newest team has taken full advantage of the ‘listed parts’ rules which allow it to source components from another team instead of building them. However it does not intend to increase the number of parts it designs in the near future.

Hungaroring practice in pictures
“That was never our plan,” said Steiner during today’s FIA press conference. “We continue a few years like we are.”

“We want to grow in a few areas like race engineering and aero development, but design staff and manufacturing we don’t want to take, because we don’t want to get distracted.”

“I think our principle works – to buy as much as we can from somebody else. We want to keep doing that because there is not a lot in it if you go to do it yourself, not a lot of speed we think is in it in the car. We would just distracted we don’t want anything of that to happen, so we keep on with our business plan, as we set out in the beginning.”

Steiner said the team had probably been fortunate to pick up points with two top-six finishes in the opening two races and was pleased with how they have bounced back from the slump which followed.

“I wouldn’t say we were bad in the beginning, but if you are new it take some to gel and we always knew this,” he said. “Maybe we were lucky to get these points in the beginning because it gave us confidence, we knew where we were, that the car is good or that it is decent and we were building on it.”

“And then when we had the four races where we didn’t score, we didn’t lose our head or get nervous. We just kept on working, we said “we know we can do it, we just have to do it again”, and I think we did it again, we finished eighth and then in Austria we finished in the points again, so all in all, very happy.”

2016 F1 season

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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6 comments on “Haas won’t take on more car development for ‘a few years’”

  1. It’s a smart move, they at least look respectable out on track and look how long it has taken Manor to finally start getting their act together (let’s not forget 2 out of 3 collapsed before ever looking respectable), it’s too much of a mountain to climb to do everything from zero, it’s far easier to ease into everything

    1. @bezza695 I agree, though we should not forget Haas has the budget of Caterham, HRT and Manor combined.

    2. 3 out of 4. Remember USF1 never even finished their car.

  2. Haas is unlikely to be around in a few years sadly for F1, their business model is vastly underfunded even to run at the back…

    1. Care to explain why @nosehair?

  3. Gunter Steiner is great value in a press conference. I like him :)

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