The last Haas team in Formula 1

Formula 1's newest team, Haas, enters the world championship with a significant degree of expectation in 2016. Certainly more than you would expect of the outfit's debut given the fortunes of the most recent new additions: HRT, Virgin/Marussia/Manor and Lotus/Caterham. And that's because of its impressive technical ties and strong driver line-up.

That said, while Romain Grosjean is a driver of obvious class, Esteban Gutierrez has a major junior single-seater title on his CV, and an engine/chassis package from Ferrari/Dallara is as solid a footing as any, the entry is still some way off the last Haas in Formula 1.

The similarly-named but entirely different Haas operation that entered F1 three decades ago did so in some style, with 1980 world champion Alan Jones coaxed out of retirement to spearhead the attack.

Jones had completed his 'final' full F1 season in 1981, winning twice en route to third in the points as the reigning champion. He competed for the Arrows team in 1983, retiring at Long Beach on his one world championship appearance and taking a podium in a depleted Race of Champions field at Brands Hatch.

Le Mans followed in 1984 (he was sixth in a Kremer-run Porsche 956), and he bagged a podium on an Indycar one-off at Road America a year later, alongside an Australian Touring Car campaign.

And then Haas came calling. Jones, honest to the last, takes up the story.

"I thought, well who knows?" he recalls. "I'm back in F1. I'm getting paid very good money, who cares? If it turns out terrific, it turns out terrific. If it doesn't, well, I've got more money in the bank."

Founded by CART team boss Carl Haas and ex-McLaren chief Teddy Mayer, the fledgling F1 operation had serious partners in Goodyear, Ford and American company Beatrice Foods. And, supporting designer Neil Oatley, a little-known protege named Ross Brawn...

Jones failed to finish any of his three races in late 1985 © LAT

"I likened it to being in a kitchen and having all the fantastic ingredients, but the cook fucking it up," Jones says. "I won't say who the cook was, or the cooks - but there were some there that buggered the cake.

"Not least of which was that we had the 'hand grenade' initially, which was the Hart engine, which just blew itself to pieces with monotonous regularity. And then we had the Americans come along and say, 'You're going to see American muscle at its best'. And I said, 'Oh, really, that'll be good...'"

Development of the car meant the season started late in 1985 - it made its debut at Monza, 12 rounds in. Jones only contested three races that season. After qualifying 25th then retiring in Italy he retired in the European Grand Prix (having qualified 22nd) and his home grand prix (in which he started 19th). He withdrew from the South African round.

Jones never finished a race with a Hart-powered Haas, retiring while 11th in the 1986 season-opening Brazilian race and on the first lap next time out in Spain. The Hart engine was replaced for round three with a Cosworth, and the new car, which had been designed specifically around the new Ford engine, was then able to make its delayed debut.

Jones remembers the upgrade as "a beautiful little engine, but it was gutless".

"You either couldn't drive it out of the pits and it would go pretty good on the track or vice-versa," he continues.

"At that stage Honda had electric boost adjusters but we had Bakelite sticks, sticking out of the dashboard, because to get your boost right, you've got to be at a constant amount of revs - 10,000, say. And then you bring the boost up to where you want it and then you do the other bank.

Jones scored points with the team just twice, including fourth in Austria in 1986 © LAT

"It used to take me two laps to do the boost because I'd have to do one lap with the left bank and the other lap with the right bank.

"I'll never forget I was at Monza and we were 24-or-something (km/h) slower down the straight than the Ferraris. Keith Duckworth asked how much wing was I running, and I said, 'Keith, for Christ's sake, have a look, do me a favour'. They were running a barn door and they were 24ks quicker. Ours was virtually flat."

The Ford engine did offer an improvement, albeit not a substantial one. Jones finally finished a race for the first time since coming back to F1 with 10th in Canada. A qualifying peak of 10th, in Hungary, was a pure-pace anomaly, although the Australian did grab ninth on the road in Germany and then bagged top-six finishes in Austria and Italy.

If nothing else, the sheer number of retirements means Jones can boast a 100 per cent success rate in terms of top-10 finishes with Haas, and his four-point haul left him 12th in the standings in 1986.

Unsurprisingly, the project didn't continue. Beatrice pulled its backing and the outfit soon disbanded.

"It was a complete bloody disaster," Jones reflects. "It could have been good, but it just was never to be."

...MAKING IT BIG AS AN AUSTRALIAN

"It's a bit of a commitment to jump on a ship or a plane and come over to England and go motor racing. I couldn't go home and have a roast dinner with mum. My whole family were back in Australia. You haven't done it for fun.

"When I first came over and raced Formula 3, there were a lot of good English F3 drivers but they all just fell by the wayside. They decided to go and take over the family business or whatever - there was none of that for Aussies, because there was no family business to take over. So you had to make it work."

...STRIKING A CHORD WITH WILLIAMS AND HEAD

"Frank is charming, but he's committed. I mean how he has stuck it out the length that he has and done as many F1 races that he has?

"One of the reasons that I gave up was that I was sick of the bloody flying and sick of the crowds. And Frank does it in a bloody wheelchair. An able-bodied person would be hard-pressed to do what Frank has done for the length of time that he has done it.

"He is very single-minded, very competitive. He is a racer. Patrick is a racer. If I ever scraped the wall or spun off and damaged the rear, you'd know Patrick was very unhappy and he would let you know about it. I'd tell him to fuck off.

"We had a bit of a standing joke because if the car ever broke down I would always say, 'Patrick you owe me one'. And if I did a mistake and spun off or something, I owed him one. So we had a good relationship."

...RICCIARDO THE POTENTIAL WORLD-BEATER

"Oh there's no question. I tested him in an A1 Grand Prix car at Silverstone years ago. He had never been in the car, he had never been to Silverstone and he was quicker than the drivers we had.

"I wanted to sign him up but [Helmut] Marko wouldn't release him. He's the real deal. He'll get the job done. Put it this way, if he was in a Mercedes he would get the job done."

...REGRETS
"None at all. I've never been one for statistics. Up until then you'd won your last grand prix and then stopped. So what? So I stopped F1 having won my last grand prix. There's no trophy for that - that's just bullshit."

The full Alan Jones interview is available in this week's issue of Autosport, available online and in newsagents now.