Edd Straw

How big really is the Haas Formula 1 team?

Yeah, and it all comes from how this team originated.

It's worth just briefly reminding people of that because at first, this team was conceived as a Ferrari customer team, as in running Ferraris.

Customer teams were outlawed.

Gene Haas thought, right, this project's done.

But Gunther Steiner, who of course had connected with Haas through his work in NASCAR, came up with this idea where you take as many of the non-listed parts, as they were then called, as possible.

And so then they needed to...

draft on the aerodynamic capabilities from Dallara etc originally they had an entry for 2015 they deferred it to 16 and this allowed them to do what the 2010 new teams had failed to do which is turn up and perform at a very credible good level immediately but it's

It's such an interesting model because I don't think you'll see any new teams coming in with this model.

You would not be let in now.

It was absolutely essential in the mid-2010s for a team to have any chance of getting up and running.

F1 was a very different place now.

But it's strange, isn't it?

Because the team is bigger than its raw numbers because of that multi-facility thing and taking so much from Ferrari.

And I feel like that gives it a shortcut to a certain level of performance, but also it blocks it off from a higher level.

and that's what the whole evolution of the team is about doing, isn't it?

Because I think Haas has done a great job generally in F1 over the past 10, 11 seasons.

I think they've only been, what, last in the championship, is it once?

Is that correct?

Which is pretty impressive for the smallest team.