Haas F1 are a team which challenged the way Formula One has traditionally gone racing. First announced as F1 contenders in 2014, Haas F1 finally pitched up for the start of the 2016 season and are the last newly formed team to join the F1 grid.
Set up on a shoestring budget, Haas went about delivering their F1 car in a different fashion than has been seen before. A partnership with Ferrari meant they buy Maranello power units each year, together with as many other components as allowed under the FIA’s listed parts regulation.
The Italian fabrication company who supply the Indycar series with their standard chassis, Dallara are the partners whom Haas rely on for the design and fabrication of their F1 cars. Last Autumn the US owned team announced a new partnership with the racing arm of the Japanese Motorcar company, Toyota Gazoo Racing, although this was recently after announcing a commitment to continue as a Ferrari customer until 2028.
Toyota to replace Dallara and more
The TGR logo was first seen on the cars at their home Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, which sparked paddock rumours that a return to F1 by the Japanese manufacturer was in the pipeline. Yet nether party acceded to the notion this was the start of a merger or buyout, with Haas claiming the advantages from the relationship would come through improved manufacturing processes and inout from the Gazzo engineers.
Toyota Gazoo Racing currently competes in the World Rally Championship, the World Endurance Championship together with the World Rally-Raid Championship. Its European base is Cologne which has two rolling road wind tunnels, and was the original factory of Toyota’s F1 team that competed from 2002 to 2009, before quitting the series after failing to win a race despite having the first billion dollar F1 annual budget.
“The ability to tap into the resources and knowledge base available at Toyota Gazoo Racing, while benefiting from their technical and manufacturing processes, will be instrumental in our own development and our clear desire to further increase our competitiveness in Formula 1,” said team boss Ayo Komatsu at the announcement. Which would appear to indicate over the longer term, Dallara will be left out in the cold.
In return for their investment, Toyota Gazzo have an opening for their racers, engineers and designers to have access to a live F1 ongoing project. Toyota Gazoo president Tomoya Takahashi believed the arrangement would benefit his company’s development.
Haas boss denies Toyota impact on string 2024 finish
“By competing alongside MoneyGram Haas F1 Team at the pinnacle of motorsports, we aim to cultivate drivers, engineers, and mechanics while strengthening the capabilities of MoneyGram Haas F1 Team and Toyota Gazoo Racing,” he said. “And we desire to contribute to motorsports and the automotive industry.”
Of course only a fool believes Toyota are doing this for the good of their reputation and for their interns, there will be a longer term plan for the Japanese company to return to Formula One. Of course they may be some cross over technology between F1 and their WEC programme but this would not be enough of a benefit for Toyota to invest as heavily as they are doing.
A strong finish to the 2024 season, saw Nico Hulkenberg score points in eight of the last nine race weekends helping the US owned team to P7 in the constructors’ title race, although they were thwarted by Alpine ahead of them who had a remarkable Brazilian Grand Prix. In a rain soaked Interlagos, with Ocon and Gasly pitted at the perfect time under the safety car and finished the race P2/3 behind the genius drive from Max Verstappen.
When asked whether the the TGR deal had been influential in Haas F1 strong finish to the 2024 season, Komatsu replied: “How quickly do you think those things are going to have an impact? You’re announcing it, you think the next day parts are going to be on the car? No, no.
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“Its going to take a year”
“That kind of collaboration takes time. At the moment [December 2024], we are in the very early stages of actually setting up the project, et cetera. So, it’s actually a dip, because we haven’t actually increased our number of people, but we have to set up the project. People are working more.”
“It has nowhere near got to the stage where we can feel any benefit. In fact, we are even more stretched at this minute. It’s a dip stage, which is normal, we just need to get out of that and get onto the stage where we can stabilise it, but that’s going to take several months. To feel the effect on the track, it’s going to take a year at least,” concluded the Haas F1 boss.
The first evidence the partnership was bringing gains to Haas cause came this year with a ‘previous cars’ test for Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon before official pre-season testing in Bahrain began. This was the first time since Haas joined the grid in 2016 that they have had the funds and necessary manpower to run a test under the FIA’s “Testing with Previous Cars” articles.
This week the next step in the partnership has become evident as Haas F1 again run a TPC test with their 2023 car with Japanese driver Kamui Kobayashi – more than a decade on since his last involvement in Formula One. Haas and Gazzo have performed other TPC’s with young Japanese drivers this season, but as Komatsu explains, this is a while new world for those working for the Haas F1 team.
All a ‘precursor’ to Toyota buying Haas F1
“TPC is very important in terms of training personnel, we have just over 300 people, and we have no contingency in personnel,” he said at the announcement off the partnership. “So if let’s say one race engineer, one performance engineer decides to leave or has a programme not to attend a race we are really struggling, on the limit all the time, and in order to improve the organisation you cannot be that kind of survival stage as a baseline, we’ve got to build up our organisation, so through TPC we can start training our engineers, our mechanics, having back-up people there.”
Along with the TPC programme, Toyota’s expertise and facilities have enabled Haas for the first time to run its own simulator programme too. “We never had a simulator on site in Banbury, ever,” Komatsu said. “We’ve only got a very limited number of personnel.
“Trackside engineers, we’ve got what you see on the trackside and there’s not many people behind that. So imagine in between races doing a simulator session in Italy [Ferrari’s simulator], I cannot ask my UK-based guys to come back from those 24 races and then spend another 10 weeks in Italy to do simulator sessions.”
All in all Haas F1 are morphing from the kit car F1 outfit they have been since joining the grid, towards becoming a fully fledged manufacturer through its partnership with TGR. Yet a number of paddock sources remain confident, all this is a precursor to Toyota buying into Haas F1 and once again fielding their own Formula One team.
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The Judge, a nom de plume of an experienced F1 journalist and site founder with long-standing sources across the paddock. With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
