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Steiner wants cost cap decision to be made by mid-2018

Published on 01 Dec 2017 17:34
3
By: Fergal Walsh

Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner hopes that Liberty Media will present its ideas for cost capping by the midpoint of the 2018 season. Liberty has already spoken about introducing cost capping in an attempt to make the field more competitive.

Haas entered Formula 1 in 2016 and had a reasonably successful debut year, with a best finish of fifth place coming in Bahrain. Steiner wants plans for a cost cap to be made sooner rather than later so the American team can concentrate on expanding.

"We’ve already started this process at about mid-season when we discussed we were still up and down and needed to settle," Steiner said. "At the moment we want to stop because we want to see what Liberty Media comes up with for the cost cap. Why would we grow a team for one or two years then to dismantle it again?

"That is never good, so you’d rather try to work with a smaller amount of people and when the cost cap is here if there are no negatives then we can grow and have growing pains rather than the pain of letting people go. We have to manage better the people we have at the moment. After next year we will know more about the new direction of the sport ahead of 2020-2021.

"With the cost cap coming in we don’t really know where to go and at the moment I don’t want to grow any bigger after our next step. Once we know where the sport is going then we can react but there is no point to react now and then counter-react a year later."

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Replies (3)

calle.itw

Posts: 8,527
Some sort of cost cap could be a good idea, but lets not make it too shallow.
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- Dec 1 2017 - 19:11
RenaultFM1

Posts: 100
You have the smalles team so how can you talk about let people go..Even you get 100 more people into Haas you still a small team..Spend more money or be left behind...
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- Dec 2 2017 - 04:14
- Barron
  
  Posts: 625
  That’s a good point but Haas F1 business model doesn’t stack up to be highly competitive with his base in the US and the chassis & PU in Italy. I believe he thought he could do it on the cheap by using more off-the-shelf parts and Dallara chassis. Dallara may be prolific at making chassis for nearly all the other single seat pro categories but they are a production line and not excellent at bespoke orders like Haas they also have no competition in these series and so progress is stagnant. The constant development & upgrades throughout the season demanded by a competitive F1 team I believe is beyond the manufacturing capability of Dallara. Their previous F1 forays have been less than stellar. The problem for Haas now is where does he go from here? The fact that Steiner wants answers on budget caps by mid 2018 points to the unfortunate possibility that he may not be on the grid in 2019. Toyota tried the split base routine with the biggest budget in F1 and look where that got them and the only teams who have successfully done it are Ferrari & Sauber. Haas needs to take a dump or get off the pot.
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  Dec 2 2017 - 10:24