Haas not planning upgrades amid 2020 uncertainty

Haas will not bring any upgrades to its Formula 1 car this year until the 2020 season calendar is firmed up and its racing budget is set.

There is still great uncertainty over how many races will be held this season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with F1 so far only confirming an initial run of eight European-based races running from July until early September, beginning with the Austrian Grand Prix in a fortnight’s time.

With a final calendar yet to be finalised, it remains unclear how much commercial rights income each team will get. Haas team principal Guenther Steiner confirmed the American squad will hold fire on introducing any updates to its 2020 challenger while it evaluates its financial situation.

“At the moment we are not planning any upgrades until we know exactly what we are doing this year budget-wise and what we are doing race-wise,” Steiner said during a press conference on Thursday.

“I cannot spend money which I don’t know if I’ve got. At the moment we have to be very cautious with what we are doing, because obviously as you all know the income is going down with having less races and races without spectators.

“Until it’s very clear, I’m very cautious and just make sure we participate, that we do our job as best we can, that we are making no mistakes in the races and in the sessions and just focus on that.”

As part of a cost-saving package aimed at reducing spend, teams have agreed to carry over their 2020 cars into 2021 before a delayed major regulation overhaul comes into force from 2022.

A freeze on 2022 car development means teams cannot start work on their new designs until next year, opening the door for resources to instead be used on their current packages.

“The worst would be to spend the money now and then not have the money to do the upgrades - that is no help,” Steiner continued.

“Like any other company you need to manage this is part of the risk we have got. It’s fine, we need to live with that. This is an exceptional year, hopefully, for all of us so we live with it.

“We’ve learned quite a lot about upgrades – they are never as big as you hope they are as these days you can do quite a lot on the first car. In our opinion it’s not a necessity to have them.

“What is really needed for us is not to make mistakes, that’s what we’ve decided and we’ve gone down that road and not risk planning for something we cannot afford.

“That would be worse because then we wouldn’t be able to go to the last grands prix and then for sure that wouldn’t give us any points. It’s just how we manage a company and we are happy to do it like this. We know what we are doing and we are happy with the decision.”

An unprecedented and congested run of races has also raised some concern over spare parts, particularly for the smaller teams. However, Steiner insists Haas “shouldn’t have a problem” because it is opting not to bring upgrades during the early stages of the campaign.

“Actually the spares situation is made easier because we are not planning any upgrades at the moment,” he explained.

“So you know the races, you know how many parts you have to have. Sure you don’t plan on having a lot of crashes or anything, but at the moment we take an average year to base our quantity of spare parts so we shouldn’t have a problem

“If we have a problem we will sort it, but there’s not a financial problem to have spare parts.”