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Haas F1 latest to furlough staff, majority of UK employees impacted
Haas has become the latest Formula 1 team to furlough some of its staff amid the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting the majority of its UK-based team members.
McLaren, Renault, Williams and Racing Point have all so far confirmed their use of the UK Government’s job retention scheme, allowing companies to temporarily lay off staff and have their salaries paid up to a maximum of 80% or £2500 ($3100) per month. Formula 1 itself has also furloughed half of its staff at this time, and Haas has now followed suit.
The majority of UK staff have been furloughed, with the move effective from April 1, with a few key senior personnel kept on working taking reduced salaries. The team has bases in the United States and Italy, but at this stage RACER understands discussions are continuing about any further changes to the working approach there.
The teams are all in the middle of an extended mandatory shutdown period, designed to reduce overheads. Originally a period of 14 days had to be taken in August, but that was moved forward to March and April and extended to 21 days initially, and last week further to 35 days to be taken by the end of May.
Formula 1’s season will not start before June 28 at the very earliest, with every race up to the French Grand Prix so far postponed or cancelled.
Chris Medland
While studying Sports Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, Chris managed to talk his way into working at the British Grand Prix in 2008 and was retained for three years before joining ESPN F1 as Assistant Editor. After three further years at ESPN, a spell as F1 Editor at Crash Media Group was followed by the major task of launching F1i.com’s English-language website and running it as Editor. Present at every race since the start of 2014, he has continued building his freelance portfolio, working with international titles. As well as writing for RACER, his broadcast work includes television appearances on F1 TV and as a presenter and reporter on North America's live radio coverage on SiriusXM.
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