Gene Haas' new American F1 team

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Experience is no substitute for speed. Heikki Kovalainen is a testament to that. He was recruited to Lotus/Caterham and barely made a dent.
 
An announcement regarding new teams is expected today. Speculation suggests Haas will be given a spot on the grid for sure, and that a second team *might* be accepted alongside him, but I cannot find anything substantial to support this; most of it seems to boil down to "Haas has money, so he's as good as in".
 
http://www.f1times.co.uk/news/display/08549

Started groaning when I read that they wanted Dallara to make their car. Yeah, it's a better move than trying to dive into the deep, dark, dangerous, alien, waters of trying to build your own from scratch with no experience, but is Dallara really the only capable outfit?

What about... I don't know, Oreca? Something... whatever, I really don't know, just really hoping they don't do the same thing as HRT and really do just use 2015 as a learning year with the car, then start producing their own. They seem to have the money to do so, let's just hope it isn't all blasted away in their first year and management goes well.

But I'm talking like it's a done deal, still not confirmed. Really curious as to who the second team could be... hopefully it's a manufacturer and not just some feeder series team looking to throw more expensive parties for their network.
 
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It's true; Dallara have not made great cars in the past. But who was paying for them? HRT. And Dallara stopped work when HRT stopped paying.
 
Dallara is a start and not a surprising one considering who has been building the Indy Cars for how long now? I mean that seems to be the American go to I'd say since it's the closest open wheel racing we have, not sure who else could build the chassis though @Wardez. Multimatic perhaps...but that doesn't seem too be all that great either, seems like a lot of the old chassis building guys of the past are gone (e.g. Reynard)
 
Yeah, I realize Dallara is good... enough. Just saying it's kind of frustrating that they always seem to be the only ones people can turn to.

Oreca doesn't have F1 experience, but they know how to build reliable cars, they could take a crack and do well I would say.

They [Dallara] do Indy, a bunch of European Formula Junior series, and even Formula Nippon as well iirc. I've always heard they do great designs for spec series, which explains their monopoly, I just have a childish wish that more people would try it. But yeah, not much money in it I suppose. Again, me being childish :3

I just love when engineers take on challenges for the sake of the challenge alone, which is such a rare things these days, and it's getting rarer.

Take Honda's F1 concept that was built to '93 regulations, the Honda RC-100. One of the prettiest F1 cars in my opinion, although it was never raced - they never even planned for it to race. They pretty much just did it for fun! Honda encouraged their engineers to go mad and create all sorts of things to spike up morale and motivation around their staff. It seemed to work as that's when Honda was starting up on their second golden age. But anyway, way past the topic at hand, just felt like ranting a bit.
 
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Swift Engineering is still around and is American. And after losing the Formula Nippon contract to Dallara, I'm sure they'd jump at the opportunity to build a new chassis.

With Dallara having a near-monopoly in single seater chassis construction (especially with bigger cars), there isn't much in the way of alternatives. Other firms that are in the business of building race car chassis either don't have much or any experience with single seaters (Oreca, Adess, Onroak, etc) and others might be too small (Tatuus, Mooncraft, Sign Tech, RFR, etc.), and who knows if Dome would be interested. Dallara are the best choice really.
 
Wardez
Yeah, I realize Dallara is good... enough. Just saying it's kind of frustrating that they always seem to be the only ones people can turn to.
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Yeah true I was seriously curious those of how long Dallara has been building cars for Indy...

Oreca doesn't have F1 experience, but they know how to build reliable cars, they could take a crack and do well I would say.

They do Indy, a bunch of European Formula Junior series, and even Formula Nippon as well iirc. I've always heard they do great designs for spec series, which explains their monopoly, just have a childish wish that more people would try it. But yeah, not much money in it I suppose. Again, me being childish :3

I just love when engineers take on challenges for the sake of the challenge alone, which is such a rare things these days, and it's getting rarer.

Take Honda's F1 concept that was built to '93 regulations, the Honda RC-100. One of the prettiest F1 cars in my opinion, although it was never raced - they never even planned for it to race. They pretty much just did it for fun! Honda encouraged their engineers to go mad and create all sorts of things to spike up morale and motivation around their staff. It seemed to work as that's when Honda was starting up on their second golden age. But anyway, way past the topic at hand, just felt like ranting a bit.
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Trust me as a person studying engineering and talking to people of the field being apart of SAE and what not, I feel the same that challenges should be taken up. I too think Haas shouldn't follow the path of HRT just to see how it works or easy for now. Though it makes a good bit of sense, I guess the dreamer in me would like to see them build their own car from the start and forward.
 
LMSCorvetteGT2
Though it makes a good bit of sense, I guess the dreamer in me would like to see them build their own car from the start and forward.
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It has been suggested that the Haas-Dallara relationship could last just one year, with the team running a Dallara chassis from a base somewhere in Europe while Haas sets up a more-permanent arrangement for 2016. But Haas himself has said nothing on the matter.
 
prisonermonkeys
It has been suggested that the Haas-Dallara relationship could last just one year, with the team running a Dallara chassis from a base somewhere in Europe while Haas sets up a more-permanent arrangement for 2016. But Haas himself has said nothing on the matter.
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Haas has money, as you said. Bernie deals normally involve a forfeit so that once you start kicking tyres for real he's earning either way.

The fact that Dallara are the "go to" chassis people is kind of a function of the industry. Building/printing components for modern single seaters is difficult, time consuming and expensive. To maintain the technology you have to maintain the business, a couple of relatively fallow years can see you slip way behind the efficiencies of someone who has had investment throughput.

There are astonishing amounts of energy bound up in CF and MP chassis components and that all costs money to gather and store. Dallara have shown themselves to be very good at it.

As you say the HRT contract wasn't paying them very well (or sometimes at all) and I doubt Dallara put together too much of a long term R&D programme ;)
 
The decision on who to take has been delayed. From the sounds of things, the FIA only wanted to take one team, and was hoping it would be easier to separate Haas and the Romanians. As it turns out, it is nowhere near as easy to separate them as hoped. Apparently the Romanians want to start straight away, but Haas would prefer to wait until 2016, and so Ecclestone and Todt are in disagreement as to how best to proceed.
 
prisonermonkeys
It has been suggested that the Haas-Dallara relationship could last just one year, with the team running a Dallara chassis from a base somewhere in Europe while Haas sets up a more-permanent arrangement for 2016. But Haas himself has said nothing on the matter.
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I figured they do that since that was the plan most new teams go by, but someone from an engineering aspect (me) still has dreams of grandeur of a David-esque group coming along and doing it all on their own from the get go.

Realistically that has never really been a reality.
 
Interesting! From what I've read most deals with Bernie end up paying him either way - I treat all "new team on the grid" rumours with the same skepticism at first. Not because they're not trying to get a team to the grid but because a lot of people fail somewhere after the first-team-jackets stage.

prisonermonkeys
...most of it seems to boil down to "Haas has money, so he's as good as in".
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Doesn't the hackneyed line say that "the only way to leave F1 with a small fortune is to arrive with a large one"?

Mr Haas, Mr Ecclestone. Mr Ecclestone, Mr Haas.
 
The interesting thing is that Bernie is more or less saying the same thing as he was a couple months ago- Haas has the money, will he spend it? Only now he's also saying he's probably getting to get his team.

By the way, Gene Haas isn't going to get you into New York or LA, Bernie. Nobody cares about NASCAR out there among the general public, and there's no way you would be able to raise 100 million to get that kind of a track out there. And if you really wanted something like that, just go to Laguna Seca or the Glen or even the Auto Club Speedway road course.
 
Except that there are already plans for a race near New York City, and Chris Pook reckons a race in Long Beach is feasible.
 
Long Beach is/was being considered, but they're looking at extending the IndyCar contract so I'm not sure if an F1 return would happen. Though, it would probably benefit the city and IndyCar if they did a double-event weekend partnered up with F1.

I don't think F1 would look at returning to another oval to host a race. Laguna Seca isn't long enough as it's below the 2.5 mile minimum, and Watkins Glen isn't up to the standards for F1.
 
Question is, will there be any net gain? I can see a real possibility of losing Lotus and Caterham at the end of this season.
 
Samus
Question is, will there be any net gain? I can see a real possibility of losing Lotus and Caterham at the end of this season.
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So do I. And Gene's team will most likely have a very short life in F1. History has shown us that in modern F1 is extremely difficult for a new team to establish and be succesful, with RBR being the most fortunate of them.
 
MasamuneDate
And Gene's team will most likely have a very short life in F1.
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As part of the application process, the candidates had to demonstrate that they had a budget in place for several years. It appears to be a direct response to the concerns that they would not be able to survive.

I'm guessing Haas isn't just using his personal finances to fund the team. There were lessons that had to be learned from USF1, and any potential investors would want to be certain that Haas had addressed them before committing to the project.

As for the Bazac-Kolles bid, they are getting backing from the Romanian government.
 

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