Last Updated on October 14 2025, 7:09 am
Haas F1, the little team that could – For years, Haas F1 has been the quiet accountant of the Formula 1 paddock, the one team more interested in spreadsheets than speed traps. While others splash cash on wind tunnels and shiny carbon fibre, Gene Haas and his team have achieved the impossible: five consecutive years of profit.
Haas closed its 2024 financial year with a profit of £6.5 million (€7 million), its biggest since 2019. This brings the total earnings since 2020 to an impressive £26.2 million. For a team that is still performing at the lower end of the constructors’ table, this feels like the financial equivalent of winning Monaco.
In a sport where teams claim to be struggling financially while their drivers crash million-pound cars for fun, Haas has somehow become the Warren Buffett of Formula 1.
The numbers make for oddly satisfying reading: Revenue of £119.4 million, administrative costs of £111.3 million, and yet they still made a profit. It’s the kind of thing that would make even Red Bull’s accountants do a double-take. While Williams and Aston Martin blew their budgets on shiny new factories and hospitality palaces, Haas quietly counted their coins, chuckled, and banked another year in the black.
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Ferrari parts, bargain dreams
At the heart of Haas’s sensible success lies their famously pragmatic model: buy as much as you legally can from Ferrari. Chassis? No, but almost everything else? Thank you, Maranello. While other teams pursue the elusive ideal of ‘innovation’, Haas’s philosophy seems to be ‘why reinvent the wheel when Ferrari will sell you theirs?’
This approach has earned Haas some criticism over the years, but it has also ensured the team’s consistent survival. In a sport where even the biggest teams can stumble into bankruptcy faster than a pit stop error, the American team keeps its balance sheets as tidy as its garage floors. In a way, it’s almost refreshing, Formula 1 capitalism distilled to its purest form: maximum outsourcing, minimum spending and steady profit.
Austerity, but make it fashionable
In 2024, Haas’s cost of sales dropped by an astonishing 60 per cent to just £502,000. While rivals were bleeding cash on ever-costlier parts and endless upgrades, Haas found a way to spend less and smile more.
While the financial filings blandly note that ‘costs for the year were in line with forecasts’, the real question is how they managed to cut £375,000 from one of the most expensive sports on earth. Did they buy components on sale? Did someone find an eBay listing for last year’s suspension arms? The mystery lingers.
It is also worth noting that 2024 marked the first full season without Günther Steiner at the helm. The famously blunt team principal, whose expletive-laced leadership style made him a Netflix folk hero, reportedly earned a salary of $1 million.
If this figure is accurate, it’s hard not to notice that a significant portion of the team’s profits roughly equate to the cost of one Steiner. In purely economic terms, Steiner may have been the most expensive swear jar in motorsport.
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Success by subtraction?
For all its financial neatness, Haas remains Formula 1’s paradox. The team spends less, earns less and finishes lower, yet somehow stands taller on the balance sheet than some of its flashier rivals.
Red Bull may dominate on the track, but Haas quietly wins in the boardroom. Aston Martin’s spending spree may yield podiums, but not profits. Williams continues its long road back to glory, but its accountants can’t yet relax. Meanwhile, Haas just keeps racking up small victories, like a tortoise overtaking hares on a spreadsheet.
There’s also a philosophical elegance to it. Haas’s model isn’t about chasing glory, it’s about endurance. It’s hard not to admire the audacity of refusing to play Formula 1’s ruinous spending game while still managing to smile all the way to the bank.
The quiet satisfaction of survival
Five years of profit might not make Haas a title contender, but it makes them something rarer: sustainable. At a time when manufacturers are threatening to pull out due to rising costs and teams are relying on billionaire backers just to survive, Haas is a stubborn reminder that Formula 1 can still be a business and not just a playground for billionaires.
Perhaps that’s the ultimate joke in all of this. The team that spends the least, wins the least and makes the least noise somehow earns the most consistent returns. While other teams chase milliseconds, Haas quietly collects millions.
In a sport built on speed, it turns out that slow and steady really does win the race, at least in terms of dollar signs.
Is Haas’s quiet competence the future of Formula 1 sustainability, or the most profitable form of mediocrity ever devised?
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Ferrari is still one of the sport’s most famous names, but it hasn’t won the constructors’ championship since 2008, and the last drivers’ championship was in 2007 with Kimi Räikkönen. The team is known for being one of the best in motorsport, but it has not been able to come back to the top in F1 for more than 15 years…READ MORE ON THIS STORY
A senior writer at TJ13, C.J. Alderson serves as Senior Editor and newsroom coordinator, with a background in online sports reporting and motorsport magazine editing. Alderson’s professional training in media studies and experience managing content teams ensures TJ13 maintains consistency of voice and credibility. During race weekends, Alderson acts as desk lead, directing contributors and smoothing breaking stories for publication.
Stanton is a London-based journalist specialising in sports business and sponsorship. With a degree in economics and years reporting for business-focused publications, Stanton translates F1’s complex financial world into clear, compelling narratives.
