Q&A with Gene Haas: Launching Formula 1 team will 'be awesome'

Jeff Gluck | USA TODAY Sports

One year from this weekend, Formula 1's biggest race — the Monaco Grand Prix — will likely feature an American-owned team for the first time since 1986. And by then, the two Haas F1 Team cars will have competed in several races.

Gene Haas, the co-owner of NASCAR's Stewart-Haas Racing, is the man behind Haas F1 Team. Headquartered in Kannapolis, N.C. with a base in Banbury, England, Haas F1 Team has a technical partnership with Ferrari for its engines and is working with Italian-based Dallara for its chassis.

So what's the status of the team now? Haas sat down with USA TODAY Sports to provide an update:

Q: What's your personal level of excitement as your first grand prix as an owner gets closer?

A: It'll be awesome. It should be a numbing experience. The biggest thing is the newness of the experience. It's like being in your 20s again. You don't have any idea how this all works. It's all new and that's the fun part of it. Once you do something for 10 or 15 years, you kind of know exactly what's going to happen. When we go to the track, we really don't.

The other thing is the logistics of all these people. You look at the cars — the choreographing of all this stuff coming together — it's just totally different than what we do here. That's kind of the exciting part of it.

Plus, open-wheel racing has been around a long time and it's kind of fun to be able to participate in what's evolved over the last 60 or 70 years and be part of it.

Q: You recently attended the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona. Has the F1 paddock accepted your team as something that will become a reality?

A: You know, I think there's maybe less skepticism, but I think there's still some questions as to what kind of team we'll be — whether we'll be competitive. There's a lot of unknowns as far as what people can see.

They've always been pretty friendly. Everybody in the paddock says hello and greets you. … People talk to us a lot more in concrete ways.

Q: In January, you bought the Banbury, England, facility of the bankrupt Marussia team. But you already built a headquarters building in North Carolina. Will the team now be doing less work in the U.S. than you originally intended?

A: When we started, we had a plan, and that was to hire the best people we could and do everything out of Kannapolis. That changed.

I think it's a learning experience. Once we got our license and we got more into it, it became apparent that without some kind of technological partner, we would really be struggling.

Initially, we were fairly ignorant. When we got a little involved and started to make contacts with various people, we started to learn fairly quickly there's a lot to learn. To sit there and say you can build a car on your own without any help from someone who is knowledgeable is foolish. We didn't go down that path.

Q: So will you be an American-owned team that's based in Europe?

A: I think the idea is to learn as much as we can from whoever we can. We're dealing with Ferrari a lot on technical aspects. Dallara is also helping us in the design and building of the chassis. The idea is once we get over this initial hurdle, then to start bringing some pieces of the car back into the U.S.

We have the ability to do carbon fiber layup and machining (in Kannapolis). The machine shop is making parts for wind tunnel testing we're doing. … As time goes on, more and more of that will be done in the United States. The Banbury facility is more (about) logistics; when the car comes back (from races) and where we have to store cars and stuff like that.

Q: Has there been any progress on the search for your two drivers?

A: I think the seriousness of the interest is picking up quite a bit. Right now there's a lot of churning in the garage there in Formula 1. Some people are doing really well and everybody else is doing really bad. (Laughs) Some of the teams they thought would do good really missed it.

The drivers we would probably be getting are drivers who have gone to another team and aren't happy with that team's progress. It's a real chess game of figuring out who is going to wind up where. We're just another alternative.

I think drivers are very cognizant of the fact that if they choose the wrong venue, they can screw their careers. Because when there's technological issues they haven't overcome, they're wasting a whole year. And they don't like to do that.

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