GitanesBlondes wrote:
Bobby Rahal had plenty of experience when he was running Jaguar, how'd that work out?
You also are significantly overestimating the ability of F1 to attract sponsors. F1 is not a sponsor friendly venture anymore as the costs are simply too great, and the benefits are far too little for most companies to get involved. Sure he can just put Haas CNC on the engine covers all he wants, but that's not generating any money to cover the overhead of running the team as he would just be paying himself.
Having contacts and suppliers means absolutely nothing since you want people who actually have real world experience applicable to F1 if you are looking to succeed. Hiring a moron like Gunther Steiner is a sign that you're not really that interested in making a serious effort to field the best possible team.
Talking about what your approach is, and claiming you're not going to make the same mistakes as those who came before you is all great sound bites for the PR campaign, but it doesn't actually accomplish concrete things.
If Haas really wants to field the best possible team, he would have simply taken over Marussia completely and paid off their debts. Why? You don't have to go through some silly auction to cherry-pick a few things. You get the tried and true staff who knows what the whole thing is about. They had the 2015 chassis so it's not as if a chassis had to be designed from scratch unless it was imperative. You get a starting point instead of this idiocy of talking about having Dallara build a chassis.
Proven team versus starting from scratch?
Hmmmm....
I'll go with proven team since I've got the cash and that was precisely what was missing.
Since you're supposedly getting all this help from Ferrari, the entire transition is seamless by taking over Marussia.
2015 is going to be a benchmark year of sorts, and the goal is really on 2016 as the first truly competitive season.
You know what you do for 2015?
You focus on building a Monaco-spec car. The only goal is to build the best possible car for Monaco that can be a serious contender. Once you get that down, you start building for Monza. Two races can make your season completely, and as such you focus on two for 2015. If you do well with one, or even both, you can build off of that for 2016. Thinking you're going to come in for 2016 and be competitive from scratch with no real world track time is a joke. It'll take you at least 2 years to have some good results if you're good, 3 years is more likely. If you haven't done it in 3 years, there's a strong chance you never will, and you may as well pack up.
=D> this
Moxie wrote:
However, he does have an advantage due to his racing history.
He has a network of contractors, and suppliers. He already has people in place to generate non prize-money revenues (sponsorships, licensing deals, merchandise). He has an infrastructure, in-house and contracted, for the purpose of building and testing race cars. Finally he has hundreds of contacts within the racing arena, from whom he can draw to fill staff positions of all sorts.
While his outfit must make large adaptations and do a lot of learning, he is not just another A-hole showing up to the track with a big bank account.
Actually, he is worse.
First off, he rather hasn't got that wonderfull racing history without Tony Stewart. People are missing the important factor of Tony Stewart in this picture.
A network of contractors and suppliers was something Marussia and Caterham had, too. Matter of fact; the recent 'yardsale' of Marussia showed just how much they actually had to be in F1, and they were [aside a lucky day] a backmarker and went bankrupt. These people in place to generate non-prize money don't mean squad; so did Caterham and Marussia. Remember Caterham when it was Lotus/Teamlotus whatever they were? Dell, Intel, CNN, and much more. AirAsia was the parent company of tony fernandes so i'll give that the 'Haas' label. his business revenue is worth 5.19 BILLION USD, that's 5 times that of Haas. Yet, caterham went bankrupt and did not achieve a sole thing.
All his contacts, all his experience, is coming and living in the USA - that doesn't work. He wants europe, and he hires and has Americans in service to 'concour' europe's market. Good luck with that, that's not gonna work.
His infrastructure is nothing, he has a building built originally for Nascar Cup team 41, not for F1, but he expanded it so it can house F1. The building thus was never purpose-built. Meanwhile, it's based in America. It's a logistical and organisational nightmare. Having a 'depot' in Europe is not gonna work at all.
He's indeed not the next a-hole with a big bank account because quite frankly, Tony Fernandes' bank account was bigger, and so was Richard Branson's.
Speaking of the latter, Branson had high goals and big plans with his Virgin F1 team. He has an insane amount of money to throw at it. He jumped ship after one season, the wisest thing he could do. Guess why he did that?
Branson has more money, wealth, contacts and 'strings' to his hands to get 'the job done', and a whole lot of a better brain in his head, and he decided he's not having any of it after a single season.
What happened to Marussia? Gone. Why? money problems. Why is Caterham gone? Money problems.
Marussia originally had Virgin as the sponsor. Caterham had Airasia. MUCH more worth than Haas. both gone.
I don't even have to talk about HRT.
BUT, from all the locations Haas is getting his tub built, he's gonna let it be done by Dallara, the same provider that gave HRT that awful car that was hanging by a thread. And you can start about 'bad supplier' all you want and yes, it had steel brakes originally and yes, it improved a bit when they mounted acceptable carbon parts - but the fact remains it was dead last without any hope of crawling an inch forward.
All these teams were run from the UK [one went to spain or actually sat in spain, i'm not sure about HRT anymore], and it did not work at all. And all failed miserably. The main problem wasn't that their cars were that awfull bad; hell, they kept within the 107% rule big-time. The biggest problem was money flow. After 3 years of struggling, it's suddenly gone. Not the money, that was gone and kept going further away in those 3 years.
Atleast these teams were aware and prepared that they were in for a struggle. Now we have this american bigmouth that is calling these former to 'more or less established' teams that vaporised out on their problems like he knows anything about it and is not gonna make the same mistakes. No indeed, he's making bigger mistakes already and he's making the same mistakes USF1 did before.
And as for 'proof' Haas have themselves prepared more; i'll remind again of USF1, who actually had a TUB with nose ready and built in-house, an engine provider (Cosworth) and a big infrastructure. It all turned into thin air fastly, because all these things are like thin air.
And that's the same HAas has; nothing but thin air.
As for that Ferrari engine: Sauber had it in the back, they were all the way at the back. So was Marussia. Only Ferrari themselves were sort of being atleast 'mediocre'. So they may have a Ferrari engine and Ferrari parts; it'll bring them nothing but trouble. Haas would have done smart in getting a Mercedes deal which was still available before Lotus picked up a deal.
Caterham and Marussia and HRT before they went into F1 all were teams that had experience in european series, GP2 mainly, with GP2 used to be conciderd as the F1 junior feeder series. Their racing experience is with open-wheelers, not bricks on wheels. In europe, not USA. and they didn't manage to make it, sadly.
Next up, we're about to lose either Sauber or Lotus. Well established teams with huge amounts of experience and success. They might even not show up at the 2015 season start at all. How on earth does HAAS manage to make it if even they can't?
I'll tell you why - because HAAS won't nor is intending to. He'll use the bankrupcy of Caterham and Marussia and the exit of Lotus/Sauber from F1 in 2015 as his get-out-ticket and before having actually seen anything F1 related built in that Charlotte base, he'll have his Nascar Cup Team 41 well parked in there.
Leaving F1 with some sponsorship as he decides he'll sponsor F1 instead of becoming an outfit.