The Haas F1 Team is on track to have annual costs of only around $100 million, giving it one of the smallest budgets in the sport, according to recently filed financial statements.

Haas made its mark on F1 at the season opener in Australia last month by becoming the first team in 14 years to score points on its debut when Romain Grosjean finished sixth. He followed it up with a fifth place in Bahrain and although he slipped to 14th at the previous race in China, his teammate Esteban Gutierrez came home 19th giving Haas a two-car finish for the first time in F1.

Its performance has made rivals sit up and take note and Haas currently lies fifth in the standings ahead of established marques such as Renault and 12-time champions McLaren. According to those teams' latest financial statements, which are for the 2014 calendar year, they had budgets of $185.6 million and $332.9 million respectively. Haas has much better cost control than that and there is good reason for this.

Haas has taken full advantage of a new regulation which allows teams to buy more parts than before. Doing so reduces costs, and Haas is using a Ferrari engine with a chassis made by Italian manufacturer Dallara. In itself, that reduces research and development expenditure which, along with staffing and engine spend, is one of the biggest costs for any F1 team.

Haas has also benefited from economies of scale by basing its design division in North Carolina at the premises of its sister team, the championship-winning Stewart-Haas NASCAR outfit. The facilities there already included a $50 million wind tunnel as well as a 125,000-square-foot shop. The icing on the cake is that the machine tools used to build the cars are made by Haas Automation, the company founded by Gene Haas, owner of the eponymous F1 team.

Haas F1’s race operations are based in Britain and file publicly available financial statements which reveal the benefit of the team’s unique business model.

According to reports, the Haas F1 Team has received $14 million worth of exposure through the first three races of the FI season. LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

Its latest financial statements are for the five months to Dec. 31, 2014 and show that the team spent $15.8 million in that period. However, the most telling detail is is that over the 3.75 years after 2014 the team has financial commitments of $198.9 million falling due. It doesn’t confirm what this will pay for, but it is believed that it is actually the Ferrari and Dallara contracts.

The financial statements say that the amounts “have been shown in Euros as that is the currency in which the commitments are denominated.” That is the currency used by both Ferrari and Dallara and another clue is that the financial statements say the payments are split into “commitments to acquire services” and “operating lease commitments.” This describes the purchase of the chassis design and the Ferrari engine lease. Finally it adds that payments under “operating leases over the next twelve months are £Nil.” That also reflects the contract for the Ferrari engines as Haas did not start using them until this year.

The capital commitments and commitments to acquire services come to $119 million, which is $31.8 million annually, whereas the operating leases are $79.9 million from this year until August 2018. That comes to $29 million annually but still doesn’t include staffing which is the other major cost for an F1 team. Haas is understood to have around 250 staff -- the same number that Toro Rosso, which sits one place below it in the standings, had in 2011. Toro Rosso had a total wage bill of $34.5 milllion in that year, so taking the same figure and adding it to the $31.8 million believed to be for Dallara, and the $29 million to Ferrari, gives a total of $95.3 million.

The Haas F1 Team is currently fifth in the Formula One Constructors LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

If Haas comes in with a budget anything like that it will make it one of the best value for money teams in F1 as the lowest-spender is currently Manor which had total costs of $130 million in 2014 according to its latest financial statements. However, Manor has only scored two points since it joined F1 in 2010 whereas Haas has amassed a tally of 18 in the past month alone.

The true picture of Haas’ finances will only come to light when the team files its accounts for the following years. In the meantime, this data can only be considered a guideline because it doesn’t include costs such as travel, equipment hire and lease of premises. However, they only comprise a tiny percentage of the total with the bulk of the costs for any team being engines, chassis work and staff which are all factored into this estimate.

If Haas remains in fifth place in the Contstructors' Championship it will get an estimated $70 million in prize money after the end of the season and it is already reaping the rewards from increased exposure due to its impressive results.

New data shows that the Haas brand has already gotten exposure through F1 worth an estimated $14.1 million. This is the amount that the brand would have to pay to buy a similar amount of on-screen exposure to that which it receives through F1.

It peaked at $6.7 million in Bahrain and that alone is almost equivalent to the exposure value of the Renault brand in the first three races combined. Haas has so far gotten exposure worth more than the total earned by HRT, one of the three previous new teams to join F1, in its début year.

The data shows that if Haas’ performance continues as it has been doing it is on track to earn exposure worth an estimated $100 million by the end of the season. If sponsors pay commensurately then the team would have the potential to make high-octane profits.

-- Christian Sylt covers the business of Formula One for several publications, including Forbes and Formula Money.

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