Gene Haas to bid for collapsed Marussia’s assets for his new F1 team
The team closed their doors in November and missed the last three races of the season. To pay their bills, administrators are selling nearly 1,000 items including steering wheels, gearboxes, race suits and even the 2013 chassis.
It is of particular interest to Haas as he is launching an F1 team in 2016. After revealing that he is considering locating it in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, he said: "We have got the Marussia auction list so I think we will be bidders for some of that stuff."
Marussia is the second F1 team to hit the wall in the past two months. Caterham only managed to race at last month's season-ender after raising £2.4m through crowd-funding.
Haas is not deterred by their failure as he believes both teams had a flawed business model. "If we did it the way Caterham and Marussia did it we would have the same result so I think we are going to do it differently," he said. Key to this approach is taking advantage of a new regulation that will allow Haas to reduce start-up costs by buying more parts from established F1 marques. "A lot of the teams in the UK build everything themselves. They seem to have this English mentality that this is the way it has to be done and that is just not our business model at all."
Unlike all existing F1 teams, the design division of Haas F1 will be split from the race operation. Design will be based in North Carolina, alongside the Nascar stock car team which Haas co-owns, while the F1 team is on track to employ around 250 staff in the UK. "We looked at a place in Abingdon and there are several available in that area. I guess it might be a possibility to take a look at the Marussia HQ too." The Guardian