2021 regulations change ‘very little’ for Haas business model

The planned changes to the Formula 1 regulations in 2021 will change “very little” for Haas’s business model, according to team principal Gunther Steiner.

F1 officials formally confirmed the planned overhaul to the technical and sporting regulations for the 2021 season last week in Austin, as well as announcing newly-introduced financial restrictions to come into force that include a budget cap.

The changes will also see the introduction of a number of standardised parts and prescribed designs in a bid to make the sport more sustainable and cost-efficient.

Haas’s business model has seen it take as many parts as possible from Ferrari since debuting in 2016 while remaining within the regulations, and Steiner doubts this approach will change come 2021.

“Very little changes. The business model change is very little,” Steiner said.

“I’m not against it, I think there was a good compromise found for us, because in the beginning, they wanted to ban that you can buy suspension. But they realised you can buy suspension but you cannot make the fairings, which we haven’t got a problem with in general.

“I think we are OK, and then some of the parts which before we bought, now they will be standard parts. I have no problem. We negotiated it with them, and they came up with them. The brake ducts, they will be the same for everybody, so instead of buying them from Ferrari, everybody has got the same brake duct.

“There are changes, and it changes a little bit for us, but we agreed to it beforehand. We are not like, ‘Woah, they didn’t tell us that!’ If we would have had an opinion not to do it, we would have come up before.”

Haas opted to ally with Ferrari under its business model after seeing the struggles of the three newest teams prior to its arrival: HRT, Caterham and Marussia, all of whom are now defunct.

Steiner said he feels Haas’s approach would still work well for any new team wanting to join the grid under the 2021 proposals.

“When we came in and we chose this business model, we didn’t know if it would work or not,” Steiner said.

“We just said the other teams did do it, that didn’t work, and we don’t feel that we are this much more intelligent to do it the same way, just more of it.

“We decided to do a different way and it worked. So if you would come in, I think it still would work. In my opinion, it would work better to come in like we came in than start from scratch.”