Come to Formula 1, they said. It’s going to be fun, they said.
“Honestly, the first car build in 2016… that was hell,” Ayao Komatsu, who was one of the first Haas hires, joining from Lotus ahead of the team’s first season, exclaims. “It just completely destroyed all of us. I remember driving from Dallara factory to the airport in a van with a bunch of mechanics.
“It felt like we’d done whole winter testing. The guy next to me in the passenger seat was completely knocked out, sleeping – and it just hit me, ‘Shit, we haven’t even turned the wheel yet.'”
The Haas setup was different and somewhat revolutionary for Formula 1. In the half decade prior to the team’s debut, F1 had seen new projects stumble and disappear without leaving much trace: Caterham, HRT and Manor never shook off the sense of being an embarrassment for the world championship – and US F1 vanished without even appearing at the track.
Romain Grosjean driving the Haas VF-16 during Barcelona testing
Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images
Guenther Steiner created a model in which his team would rely heavily on supplies from Ferrari, exploiting everything that was allowed by the regulations, and entrusted the building of other parts to a third party – another Italian entity, Dallara.
Haas’ own operation was meant to function primarily as a racing team, designing its cars around what was offered by Ferrari – and going racing with them. But that added a certain level of complexity, too, as it was on Steiner’s squad to make it all work logistically – with Gene Haas providing sufficient funding, name and an American identity attached to the project.
“Oh yeah, it was a big challenge,” Steiner agrees, “but I would say we had the advantage, with the business model I came up with, to collaborate with somebody who knew what they were doing. There’s no need to be arrogant about something. If you need help, you need to ask for help. There’s no point to be stubborn and say, ‘Oh, we do everything ourselves’, and then you fail by doing it.
“So we got… I wouldn’t say lucky, but I must give a lot of credit to Stefano Domenicali – at the time he was the team principal of Ferrari – who believed in what we were trying to do. He didn’t want to see [the same story as] the other four teams, which wanted to come in and one didn’t even make it to the start.”
Gunther Steiner, Haas F1 Team Principal, Ayao Komatsu, Haas F1 Chief Race Engineer
Photo by: Andy Hone / LAT Images via Getty Images
Haas’ own operation was much leaner as a result compared to most rivals – and also relatively young.
“I mean, I wouldn’t say [our staff were] inexperienced, but we didn’t have any what you call high-profile people in,” Steiner recalls. “The most important thing was that the people who joined actually wanted to do their job. They were not just there to work in an F1 team – they wanted to be part of a start-up F1 team.
“[I needed] to find the right people, who actually wanted the challenge. It was people who couldn’t show what they wanted to show, but didn’t have the chance in a big team. These were the people I was looking for – people who wanted a challenge in front of them. People, who were thinking like me.
“And I didn’t want a job. I wanted to go on a mission.”
A car born under pressure
Yet, because it was new territory for Ferrari as well – combined with Haas simultaneously setting up its own operation – the first car was born after a long labour, plenty of contractions and growing pains before the VF-16 finally emerged.
Haas F1 Team unveil
Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images
“Three days before fire-up, looking at the car, I was convinced, there’s no way it was going to happen!” Komatsu says. “We partnered with Ferrari, which was great, but – yes, they have supplied engines to the customers before – they have never supplied suspension, hydraulics, all the other parts of the cars to this extent to anyone. Basically neither side had experience of doing what we were trying to do.
“Of course, we got those deadlines to fire up, etc., but Ferrari didn’t have a mechanism. So when you are left with three days to go with a huge hole, without knowing exactly how Ferrari can make it happen, it was not a very comfortable position. In the end, we made it happen, but the brake duct, for example, we didn’t even have until we went to Barcelona [testing].”
As the car was being built at Dallara, Steiner recalls that Haas personnel had to drive back and forth between its factory in Varano de’ Melegari and Maranello multiple times a day to pick up freshly produced parts from Ferrari.
“I think we were the biggest contributors to that motorway toll at that time!” he laughs. “They must have been like, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of traffic here!’ – because whenever we needed something, someone would just jump in a rental car to go out and pick it up. Everything was last minute.”
Thrown in at the deep end in Melbourne
With the biggest task completed, Haas still had to tick many operational boxes ahead of the first race in Melbourne – building procedures, establishing working practices and even doing things that may seem straightforward from afar, like pitstop practice – but still needed to be done.
Fernando Alonso, McLaren, climbs out of his car after crashing Esteban Gutierrez, Haas F1 Team
Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images
“Everyone was pretty much dead before the season started,” recalls Romain Grosjean, who was unquestionably not only the team’s leading driver, but also a huge source of feedback, given his experience – and ultimately the main hope of delivering results. “There was so much to put together, there was so much to do, to be on time, so much to learn…
“We had great people [by the time we got to Melbourne], but the first time I joined the team and got to the simulator [in late 2015], the team was made of one press officer, Stuart Morrison, one engineer, Gary Gannon, one performance engineer, Jose [Manuel Lopez], who I believe is now at Audi, and that was pretty much it. You can imagine how much there was to do and how much we had to catch up.”
According to Komatsu, the team didn’t even manage a proper pitstop practice ahead of the race.
“By the time you turn up in Melbourne, you are done, right?” he says. “And then once you get to Australia, workload is so much… you know, one night we did an all-nighter before curfew came in, and then before Sunday’s race, of course, you want to do your pitstop practice as planned: on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, right? None of that happened. So it’s like going to the race – and that’s the first time you’re gonna do a live pitstop.”
Romain Grosjean, Haas F1 Team
Photo by: Charles Coates Via Getty Images
What happened in Australia exceeded all expectations, to say the least. Grosjean’s sixth place at the end of the race was not without luck. Coincidentally, the massive crash involving Haas’ other driver Esteban Gutierrez and McLaren’s Fernando Alonso caused a red flag – and the team got away with changing tyres on Grosjean’s car under red-flag conditions, eliminating the need to do a pitstop during the race. This also allowed the Frenchman to stay ahead of several other cars, which he managed to keep behind him to the finish.
His post-finish radio – “this is a win for us” – wasn’t misleading at all.
“The only thing we wanted to achieve is to be solid,” Steiner says of his expectations ahead of the season start. “To be there – and not to be an embarrassment. Because you can embarrass yourself pretty quick in Formula 1. We wanted to be at the start, get everything there, make a good race – whatever the result is, it is what it is. We knew after the testing that we will not be five seconds off the first car. But for us, it was more like… Let’s make sure that we just don’t fuck it up, you know?”
Komatsu, who lived through the winter months with the staff, is adamant that this result – no less – saved the team.
“Before we went to race one, we already had a few people resigning,” he recalls, “because it was such a hard work. And then, honestly, Australia wasn’t much sleep, either. If it wasn’t for that P6 result with Romain, I think many more people would have resigned – because it was tough. Seriously, everybody was on their knees…”
Backing it up in Bahrain
“I did not celebrate on Sunday night and went back home,” Grosjean recalls, “but I can tell you that that day for everyone that was involved in that team would be forever marked. And for me, it was one of the most beautiful days in Formula 1.”
Romain Grosjean, Haas F1 Team leads
Photo by: Getty Images
Another one came just two weeks later in Bahrain – when Grosjean finished fifth, this time without needing much luck, but mainly thanks to an aggressive strategy: with three pitstops at a track that allows overtaking, the Haas driver was among the quickest throughout the whole race.
“Just overtaking everyone, that’s the picture that comes to mind thinking about that race: the Red Bull, the Williams, being on new tyres and just flying by people,” he says. “I mean, it was insane. It was absolutely insane how fast and how smooth that race was for us. We had a pitstop issue, so we lost the place to Red Bull – but we got him back! It was just unreal and amazing. I had one more stop than everyone else and was always on new tyres – and the car was working so well!
“It was one of those days when everything goes your way – and you don’t have to think about anything. You just push and go for it.”
Grosjean lost a few seconds due to an issue with the rear-left during a pitstop, with the crew still inexperienced, but went on to retake the lost positions thanks to fresher tyres compared to rivals.
Romain Grosjean, Haas F1 Team, Daniil Kvyat, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Andy Hone / LAT Images via Getty Images
As the Frenchman overtook Felipe Massa‘s Williams around the outside of Turn 1 in an impressive move, the shot of a laughing Steiner sitting on Haas’ pitwall made it into the world feed.
Grosjean himself couldn’t stop smiling while facing the microphones in the paddock straight after the race.
“I don’t know… This is the American dream,” he celebrated. “I don’t know, it is unbelievable. There’s lot of things we can do better, pitstops, set up of the car and so on. But this is for the guys… you know, last night I looked at their faces and they were all very tired, because the amount of work we’re doing behind the scene is huge. But this is… this is a massive reward, this is unbelievable for us. And yeah I think…”
He patted himself on the cheek: “Wait, yeah, it’s real!”
No time to celebrate
If there was a single downside to Haas’ start, it’s that the team barely had time to pause and celebrate the moment.
Romain Grosjean, Haas F1 Team
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
“It was the paranoia to go to the next race, to be ready again,” Steiner says about how the team reacted to its early success. “In Melbourne, we had the big crash with Esteban, you know? The car was destroyed. And obviously we were… and I always say, thinking back about it, that we didn’t enjoy the moment enough there.
“We should have. The whole team, not only me, we should have enjoyed it more because it was a great result. But at the time, we were just like… wow, the next race is coming up, and we are not ready for the next race. The first three, four, five races were just like survival mode.
“Obviously we had the joy after the race, we had points, but then it was like, wow, now we have to go back to work.
“The worries were not finished in Bahrain – because it was the whole year, we needed to catch up. You know, it wasn’t easy. But these results… Oh, they were fantastic for the team, for everybody involved. I mean, I always say: I did something there, you know, I had the idea how to set up an F1 team, I found investors to do it. But these people actually did the work – me on my own I cannot do nothing.
A Haas F1 mechanic with a message to the world
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
“These results, this is what we worked for. This is all the idea… because there were a lot of people who didn’t believe in my business model.
“You know, they said, ‘This can never happen’, ‘Nobody can make this happen’, you know, to work with Ferrari on this and so on… And we made it happen.”
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