F1: Haas mini wall saves team $250K

The Aston Martin F1 team has an 8-person pitwall perch that is in stark contrast to the new Haas 3-person mini-perch.

Since each team pays by the pound the cargo it ships around the world, the Haas team says it was able to save $250,000 by reducing theirs to just 3 seats.

Haas used to travel worldwide with a six seat perch but they seldom used all six

This year the team is carrying only one three-piece section to races with seats for team principal Steiner, team manager Peter Crolla and director of engineering Ayao Komatsu. The chief strategist has now moved to the garage.

“When you need efficiency, you look in everything,” Steiner said of three-seater pitwall.

“When you need money to invest in development because we are at the cost cap, where do you put it?

“Do you have six people out there [on the pitwall]? Or a quarter of a million on car updates? I know what we’re doing.

“The guys came up with that idea and if I need to stay inside [the garage], I have no problem with doing that. I don’t need to be there.

“With three seats we can cover what we need to cover and rearrange. It’s saving money to put into development because we have the cost cap.”

“The only way to get faster is development,” Steiner added.

“So you try to free up as much as you can for development.

“This year we could plan a lot better as well because last year was everything was late and we couldn’t look too much forward – we just needed to get to the first race.

“This year by signing off everything a bit earlier we could start a bit earlier with the development and have a better plan [of development] to put on the car.”

Don’t judge. It’s definitely a little bit colder here this year than it normally is 😉😅#HaasF1 #F1Testing pic.twitter.com/yHWieIaNJr

— MoneyGram Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team) February 24, 2023