American F1 team to be foreign
Mr. Haas is launching an F1 team as a marketing vehicle for Haas Automation, the machine-tool-manufacturer that he founded in 1983. He hopes the team, which will launch in 2016, will boost the company’s exposure and revenue, which came to $1bn last year.
Mr. Haas said: “I think initially we are going to be hiring around 200, maybe a little bit more than that at 250." He added that he was planning to locate the team in the UK because eight of the 11 outfits are here, in a cluster in central England known as Motorsport Valley.
It will also have a factory in North Carolina, alongside the championship-winning Stewart-Haas team, which is co-owned by Mr. Haas and races in America’s Nascar series.
"We really are going to be an American team. We are going to be different," he said. “There is no doubt about it in my mind because this is how we do things.
"We are going to learn what Formula One is all about but I think we have got American smarts as far as racing and we are going to apply that to Formula One in our own way."
Mr. Haas said it would have been quicker to become a sponsor or to acquire a team, but this would involve re-branding it rather than creating an outfit.
He has hired Guenther Steiner, a former technical director of four-time F1 champions Red Bull Racing, to run his team, to be known as Haas Formula.
"Ownership is really the only way to enter the sport in a practical fashion for my company," he says. “I think as a sponsor we would lose a lot of marketing pride… Quite frankly, I could have spent $100m in advertising and I don’t think I would get as much bang for the buck as I would in Formula One."
In April, F1’s chief executive Bernie Ecclestone said that a new team owner would need to invest $1bn over four years but Mr. Haas is confident of a return.
He said: "If we can associate Haas Automation with Formula One, it becomes a premium brand and a premium brand is the Holy Grail of marketing." The Telegraph