Haas expanding slowly until 2021 contracts are agreed

Haas will continue with its current team set-up over the next two years while it waits to see how new commercial contracts could change Formula 1.

The current commercial agreements between the teams and F1 are due to expire at the end of 2020, and the sport’s owner Liberty Media is keen on introducing a budget cap and changing the way revenues are distributed. With Haas having a small workforce – purchasing many parts from Ferrari and outsourcing certain work to Dallara – team principal Guenther Steiner does not envisage much change before 2021.

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“I can only talk for the next two years because we don’t have a contract beyond that!” Steiner told RACER. “In the next two years we will stay pretty similar. We try to take on more tasks for this coming year, but you never try to do too much, because if you get greedy then you normally trip over. We need to learn and try to do things better.”

Steiner sees the 2021 agreements as a major milestone for Haas, which entered F1 as a new team and adapted to its current structure, because any significant changes are likely to provide all of the teams with the same starting point.

“It’s where the future is," he said. "If there’s a budget cap, I think we’ve got a bigger chance to move forward than without it. If we get more share of the prize money, the better it is.

“It’s one of the most important things [in] this next contract, and as you well know, Formula 1 for 2021 doesn’t start in mid-2020, it starts mid-2019, if not before. If you would have information, for sure we would start before."

Haas finished fifth in last year’s constructors’ championship, improving on eighth place in each of its first two seasons in the sport.