The youngest team on the grid is also the one that had the roughest rollercoaster in previous years – that is Haas.
Cringe-worthy sponsorship deals, sanctioned (and banned) drivers, and promising performances that quickly fell off – Haas has had it all since joining Formula 1 back in 2016.
A short view back to the past…
The Americans had a promising start to their F1 career, achieving a total of 29 points during the 2016 season with drivers Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutiérrez. They finished ahead of well-established but struggling Renault, Sauber Ferrari, and MRT-Mercedes.
Fast forward to 2018 and the team had achieved a whopping 93 points, finishing the season 5th in the Constructors’ championship. Remember: it was their third year competing in the category.
However, it didn’t last. The 2019 season began with the team signing the most cringe-worthy and unprofessional ass-tasting energy drink manufacturer, Rich Energy, which only added to the nightmare Haas would suffer throughout the calendar, as they dropped back massively, achieving only 28 points and 9th place in the championship, just ahead of Williams.
Come 2020 and… don’t even mention it. (a) Pandemic strikes and calendar is shortened. (b) The team only achieved two finishes inside the top 10, one with Kevin Magnussen in P10, and the other with Romain Grosjean in P9, equalling to a grand total of three points for the season. (c) Haas suffered financially, and Grosjean’s crash at the Sakhir Grand Prix cost them a whole car, which only added to team principal Guenther Steiner’s headache.
New year, new me: Haas signed Michael Schumacher’s son, Mick, and russian driver Nikita Mazepin who brought a new title sponsorship from his dad, Uralkali, for the 2021 season. Mick was loved, and fans admired with attention his progression in the sport. Nikita on the other hand… it didn’t go well:
- Before the season even began he was already involved in a sexually-related social media controversy that marked his reception in the world of F1.
- He was very noticeably a paying driver because his performances were unusually bad. His popular nickname was “Mazespin.”
As you may have guessed, it didn’t work well. They finished the season with 0 points, the only team in the grid that year to do it. However, the team had stopped developing their car in the closing stage of the season and instead focused on their 2022 iteration, and it worked.
It was a new recovery year for the Americans. Mazepin and Uralkali were both banned from the sport due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which brought Magnussen back, alongside Schumacher. They achieved 37 points and finished the season in P8.
And then in 2023, you guessed it (or not, if you watched) – Haas dropped down again, achieving 12 points and being last in the standings. They had also replaced Schumacher with Nico Hulkenberg, as they felt the younger German was not performant enough for the seat. The team failed to extract more performance out of their developments, a recurring frustration, highlighting the uphill battle that awaits them in 2024.
What went wrong
Haas is a small team with tight budgets, owned by American businessman Gene Haas. They only have “over 200 employees” as stated in their website, which is way less than teams like Ferrari, Red Bull, or even Williams and Stake have.
However, we have seen them perform great even with the shortage of staff they have compared to the big players. So, we can’t attribute their failures only to that.
Haas has struggled financially, and the fact that they couldn’t get their performances right to keep improving only drove sponsors away.
Granted, someone is always willing to push their brand with any team in the paddock since, at the end of the day, we’re talking about one of the biggest sport series in the world, and exposure is always guaranteed. The difference is how much money a brand is willing to give your team in relation to your performance.
Imagine this: How can a business market itself as ‘the winning formula’ when the sponsored team is consistently at the bottom?
It’s all about the marketing. And F1 teams are business that survive on it.
However, we also need to account for the managerial aspect of team principal Steiner and how his vision of how the team should work began drifting away from that of owner Gene Haas.
Steiner has been criticized for not putting engineering, one of the most important aspects in Formula 1, “at the heart” of the teams’ management.
Another aspect that contributes to Haas’s hardships is that they don’t manufacture their own parts, making them highly dependent while decreasing their capabilities.
What’s in store for the future
The team will start the 2024 season with the same drivers it had last year -Magnussen and Hulkenberg-, but not with the same team principal.
Steiner was sacked by Haas earlier in January, and replaced with director of engineering Ayao Komatsu.
Gene said that “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.”
The American recognized “some successes” but said they need to be “consistent in delivering results that help us reach wider goals as an organization.”
“I’m looking forward to working with Ayao and fundamentally ensuring that we maximize our potential.”
Haas then dropped a line that inadvertently hit hard on Steiner: “[Ayao’s appointment] truly reflect my desire to compete properly in Formula 1.”
The team is hoping to score a podium finish or even a victory soon, but it is hard to imagine it happening for at least the next two seasons.
It’s too early to tell, and speculation is only that. The truth will be revealed throughout the season, unless the team worked magic in the winter break.
But for now, we wait as pre-season approaches next month, with Haas unveiling its livery on February 2nd.