The Haas F1 Thread - News and Speculation

[erwin greven]

Bottom post of the previous page:

I just read some 15 ago some snippets on Reddit and twitter, waiting for a confirmation. Seems more are leaving their function in Haas.

[Aty]

I just read some 15 ago some snippets on Reddit and twitter, waiting for a confirmation. Seems more are leaving their function in Haas.

Opportunity for Andretti to talk with Haas and get his spot on the grid?

Steiner leaves Haas F1 Team with immediate effect

[Everso Biggyballies]

I just read some 15 ago some snippets on Reddit and twitter, waiting for a confirmation. Seems more are leaving their function in Haas.

Its official now thats for sure. Re more casualties I just added to the original post that (former) technical director Simone Resta has also left the team.

More info coming to light on Autosport including a statement from Gene Haas himself. Re funding of the team Moneygram, the Haas naming rights sponsor for the past year or so always said that Steiner was a key part of their reason to partner with Haas, and praised his role in the increasing the awareness of Haas. Interesting to see their reaction to the news.

The Gene Haas statement....

Haas has made it clear that his focus is on improving the performance of the team.

“I’d like to start by extending my thanks to Guenther Steiner for all his hard work over the past decade and I wish him well for the future,” he said.

“Moving forward as an organisation it was clear we need to improve our on-track performances. In appointing Ayao Komatsu as team principal we fundamentally have engineering at the heart of our management.

“We have had some successes, but we need to be consistent in delivering results that help us reach our wider goals as an organisation. We need to be efficient with the resources we have, but improving our design and engineering capability is key to our success as a team.

“I’m looking forward to working with Ayao and fundamentally ensuring that we maximise our potential – this truly reflects my desire to compete properly in F1.”

As an aside Komatsu joined Haas from Renault as chief race engineer for its debut season in 2016.

Less important is Autosport is claiming he becomes F1’s first Japanese team principal of a European-based outfit. I guess he might be.... I was thinking of the Japanese run 1960's Honda initial dabble in F1 back in the 60'd. That was ostensibly initially produced out of Japan, certainly the RA 270 test car and the RA 271 debut race car were all done in Japan.

Thus Komatsu could well be the first Japanese guy to run a European based F1 team. (Initially the first Honda chassis was to be built by Lotus but that deal collapsed at the last minute forcing Honda to produce the RA270 in house in Japan
(Later on the RA 300 was of course a Lola designed car and was AKA the Hondola.

Their website suggests that Sochiro Honda was heavily involved and obviously pulling the strings but spoke of Yoshio Nakamura, assistant director of the research center becoming the first Honda F-1 team manager,

Totally off the topic of Haas but the Honda info I found on the global Honda Heritage website. Interesting reading and covers the early days in detail, right from the early days in 1962 when the order came telling Honda was to build an F1 car. What is F1 was the first question asked!
@Michael Ferner and others might enjoy it. @PTRACER will no doubt find info useful for his GPL work within.

Formula One Entry: The Initial Phase / 1964
Chapter 1 (4 'chapters' on the linkcovering the different eras of the initial projct... dont worry chapter is a bit misleading, it is not a huge read!
"What is F-1?" https://global.honda/en/heritage/episod ... ust%201964.

[Everso Biggyballies]

I just read some 15 ago some snippets on Reddit and twitter, waiting for a confirmation. Seems more are leaving their function in Haas.

Opportunity for Andretti to talk with Haas and get his spot on the grid?

Steiner leaves Haas F1 Team with immediate effect

Michael Andretti said he has tried to persuade Gene Haas to sell the Haas team "a couple of million times" over the past two years but he is absolutely not interested. Michael said Gene doesnt even bother to return his phone calls.

Gene Haas has a bit more wealth than the Andretti family and so has no pressure to sell. He has repeatedly said he wont and has no interest of getting out of F1. That positione he said has strengthened moreso with the new Concorde signed.

[Aty]

I just read some 15 ago some snippets on Reddit and twitter, waiting for a confirmation. Seems more are leaving their function in Haas.

Opportunity for Andretti to talk with Haas and get his spot on the grid?

Steiner leaves Haas F1 Team with immediate effect

Michael Andretti said he has tried to persuade Gene Haas to sell the Haas team "a couple of million times" over the past two years but he is absolutely not interested. Michael said Gene doesnt even bother to return his phone calls.

Gene Haas has a bit more wealth than the Andretti family and so has no pressure to sell. He has repeatedly said he wont and has no interest of getting out of F1. That positione he said has strengthened moreso with the new Concorde signed.

Skillful negotiator (go between) has to be hired as an honest broker and should find out what are the red lines for each party. It was said many times in the past, that Gene lost interest in the F1, and Steiner didn't see him, or talk to him for months at the time. Hard to guess what is the truth, which is why a neutral party should step in and offer Haas way out. Haas decal on Andretti's car, and so on.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Steiner has been on Twitter.....

It seems he is 'quite relieved!

I notice Mazepin escaped being thanked!

[DoubleFart]

Satire account Ballies.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Satire account Ballies.

I twondered about that.

I feel the need to buy an official Guenther T Shirt. I will miss him and his comments. He was quite a character without doubt.

Hoping he gets offered a gig on Sky F1 as a pundit.. That might make F1 a bit more interesting

[PTRACER]

Boo! I'm gonna focking miss Gunther Steiner!

[Ruslan]

Loved Steiner. Will miss him. What is Drive to Survive going to do? The rest of principals are boring as shit, although generally more interesting than most of the drivers.

Anyhow, as much as I liked Steiner, I was really never on board with Haas approach, which was apparently from the beginning to do F1 on the cheap. How was this going to produce a winning car? How was this going to produce a world championship. And... if you are not in it to win, what are you there for?

Anyhow, I think Haas went as far as they could with that approach. At its peak it was fifth in the championship (2018) but in the end, it was going to end up 10th (2021 and 2023). The team's best race result was a 4th (2018). They ended up in the top six only 12 times, 5 by Grosjean, 6 by Magnussen and 1 by Schumacher. Not a particularly impressive results over eight years, although they produced the best crash video of the decade.

Anyhow, wish the new guy the best of luck, but I have an innate bias towards promoting chief engineers to team principals. With the Haas philosophy, I can't imagine that anything will change. The car will continue to only make up the numbers. I don't know why they are there.

[Everso Biggyballies]

I just read some 15 ago some snippets on Reddit and twitter, waiting for a confirmation. Seems more are leaving their function in Haas.

Opportunity for Andretti to talk with Haas and get his spot on the grid?

Steiner leaves Haas F1 Team with immediate effect

Michael Andretti said he has tried to persuade Gene Haas to sell the Haas team "a couple of million times" over the past two years but he is absolutely not interested. Michael said Gene doesnt even bother to return his phone calls.

Gene Haas has a bit more wealth than the Andretti family and so has no pressure to sell. He has repeatedly said he wont and has no interest of getting out of F1. That positione he said has strengthened moreso with the new Concorde signed.

Skillful negotiator (go between) has to be hired as an honest broker and should find out what are the red lines for each party. It was said many times in the past, that Gene lost interest in the F1, and Steiner didn't see him, or talk to him for months at the time. Hard to guess what is the truth, which is why a neutral party should step in and offer Haas way out. Haas decal on Andretti's car, and so on.

I cant see Andretti being able to join F1 buying Haas

The major factor against any co-operation between Haas and Andretti is that Haas are so much of a siamese twin to Ferrari.They are joined at the hip. Haas have a design office at Marinello; tthey have many Ferrari employees diverted to them; Haas are contracted to use every Ferrari part they are allowed to, from suspension parts through to engine, transmission and the hybrid bits and electronics.

To all intents and purposes Haas are as closely linked to Ferrari as Alpha Tauri (ok Racing Bulls we believe it to be this year) are to Red Bull in every aspect beyond ownership. It used to be Ferrari had control over one of the seats... hence the Schumacher involvement and others Ferrari aligned drivers. That might not be a contractual link anymore but sure as hell it is one of significant influence. Just look at where the third drivers and test drivers come from.... yes, the Ferrari Academy.

On the other hand Andretti have this joint venture with Cadillac approach, which is now eventually going to lead to Cadillac building engines so they say. In the meantime there was talk of an agreement with Renault to provide engines likely branded Cadillac, to tide tAndretti over until the Cadillac engine materialised.

Are Ferrari going to jump into bed with a Cadillac GM aligned partner? Or Renault? I just cant see it.

Gene Haas wants to stay in F1. He has said that many times. He personally has more millions tucked away than all the Andrettis put together. He globally promotes his Automation business on the cars. The F1 link believe it or not works for his core business. He just wants a bit more success to justify things and further enhance the business link. The Haas model wont work with a partner with complicated baggage as Andretti are. He is happy to plough the money in... he just wants better results. They were the best of the rest in 2018 (just behind Renault with the other two OEMS and RB further).... now they have slipped to last.

With the value of teams now at a an ever increasing high (Alpine are now valued at 1.4 BILLION) even outfits like Williams and Haas are nudging a billion. Andretti does not have that sort of money to invest. He was baulking at 200 million to buy Sauber as being a stretch.

Joining or selling to Andretti wont achieve that. Full stop.The whole Andretti into F1 discussion is not for this thread.... we have a discussion over Andretti future in F1 in the new teams thread. As far as this Haas thread is concerned I cant see a link between Andretti and Haas for the reasons I state. Never say never but.....

At the moment the Haas way forward is with a new Principal, one that thinks the same way as Gene Haas does. Steiner and Haas had arrived at a point of fundamental disagreement over direction. Steiner had builf the team from scratch with Haas just signing the cheques. Steiner ran the show his way. They started off well. Now the results arent there. Gene wants results. Steiner was for all his strengths and popularity wasnt achieving the results. A football teams doesnt get results, who gets the, erm 'Arse' . The Team Manager, the head honcho does.

Steiner, sadly, was told he was The Weakest Link. Goodbye




I will miss him and cant see him being away from F1 for long.

[Everso Biggyballies]

**BAD LANGUAGE WARNING**

Why we love Guenther....

The only bits of Drive to Survive I have watched pretty much.

Includes his much publicised and f-word laden Silverstone rant when Romain and Marcus took each other out a few years ago.

[Aty]

And now there are two. Steiner and Binotto. Both will try to find a job. Not an easy undertaking. AAB (Sauber) now will have to check what's in the front, and also behind him. Fingers crossed.

[Michael Ferner]

Whether Komatsu is F1’s first Japanese team principal of a European-based outfit is about as interesting as if he was the first left-footed TP with a niece born in the Southern Hemisphere. And I don't know Mr. Steiner at all, but judging by his posts he seems to have about as much class as an empty fish bowl, and calling him "a character" reminds me of those people who used to claim Ayrton Senna had "charisma" for acting like an arrogant SOB with an attitude. Not my way of thinking.

[Aty]

It came down to performance:

“It came down to performance,” Haas told Formula1.com.

“Here we are in our eighth year, over 160 races – we have never had a podium. The last couple of years, we’ve been 10th or ninth.

“I’m not sitting here saying it’s Guenther’s fault, or anything like that, but it just seems like this was an appropriate time to make a change and try a different direction, because it doesn’t seem like continuing with what we had is really going to work.”

Frustrating as it may be (160 is a big number), I am not so sure that is just one man fault.

What was done on owner's side to help Steiner?

If Steiner was incompetent (and I am not accusing him of it), how come he lasted as long as he did?

A word of unsolicited advice to Mr. Haas: Sell!

Without levelling up on resources, Steiner's replacement will have difficulty to be anything else but a second Steiner.

[Michael Ferner]

With all due respect, but that's utter bull. Haas explicitly said it was not one man's fault, and explained why he did what he did and what he expects. Sounds very reasonable to me. As for "a second Steiner", as soon as the team has even the smallest of success under Komatsu people will ask "Steiner who?".

And, while I'm sure Mr. Haas will live very well without unsolicited advice by you or anyone else with as much insight as a goldfish, what's this all to do with selling the team? If he wanted to sell, he wouldn't exchange key personel, would he?