The Haas F1 team was born in a North Carolina steakhouse (I like to think it was Sagebrush in Mooresville, but it probably wasn’t there) where Gene Haas met Guenther Steiner for the first time in 2010. ?USF1 and Ken Anderson kind of lit the fuse of my interest in Formula 1, I went over there a few times and had a look? Haas admits. ?Ken asked me to get involved but I felt that I didn’t have the time to commit to it. But I started to follow Formula 1 from that point on and I used to do open wheel racing when I was in high school so I knew a bit about it.?

The failure of USF1 served as a lesson for many considering an entry into the top level of world motor racing and certainly put more than a few investors off getting involved in Formula 1 but it was as a direct result of that failure that Haas found himself in that steakhouse. Half a decade later and the Haas VF-16 took to the track for the first time in a private filming day in Spain. It was to be a busy few days for the man who built his fortune designing and building user friendly machine tools. Barely 48 hours after the official launch of the new Haas car, it was announced that his NASCAR team, Stewart-Haas would make a shock switch from Chevy to Ford in 2017. Rumours had been flying around for weeks that it would be Ganassi who would change name plate but nobody had linked SHR to the blue oval.
?I think it was just a business decision, it brings stability and give us a vision for the future? Haas expl...