The major headache facing F1's newest team

Being his home race, Austin was a big weekend for Gene Haas. With fourth place in the world championship in his team's sights, a decent result would have been very welcome.

But in the end, it could hardly have gone any worse. Romain Grosjean was eliminated by causing an early collision with Charles Leclerc and picked up a three-place grid penalty for Mexico as a result, while Kevin Magnussen was excluded from ninth for a fuel-consumption infringement.

To make matters worse, Renault logged 14 points thanks to a double "best of the rest" result for Nico Hulkenberg and Carlos Sainz Jr, as they came home sixth and seventh. With three races to go, fourth place is slipping out of Haas's reach.

But it has nevertheless been a good year for the Haas team. After finishing eighth in its first two seasons, fifth place would still be a decent outcome, although it's worth noting that it would be sixth if Force India could combine the points of its old and new incarnations.

Despite the upswing in form compared to its first two years, it's clear that Haas is more than a little frustrated with the current competitive state of F1, and his suggestion in a press conference last weekend that the team is competing in "Formula 1.5" is a clear signal of that.

"We've done well, but we have a lot of competition," he explains. "It's going to be even more challenging next year, especially with Renault, and McLaren will figure it out sooner or later. It doesn't take long to slip back if you're not on top of it.

"We're a good one-two seconds off the fast cars, and we don't really see any easy way to overcome that. We know we're missing something, and that's where the manufacturers - Mercedes, Ferrari, and to some extent Red Bull - have an inherent advantage.

"They make more of their cars, and they understand cars much better than we do. We're just a recipient of the Ferrari engineering, but we don't participate in that knowledge of how it's built."

It could be argued that having opted for a Ferrari customer deal, it's hardly a surprise that there's a limit to how competitive the team can be. However, Haas makes an interesting comparison with NASCAR, the other world in which his motorsport division participates.

"In Talladega, the four Stewart-Haas cars had a definite advantage over our competitors," he says. "That doesn't happen very often, but at least it does occur on a somewhat random basis - where a team will figure something out or randomly stumble onto something that gives them an inherent advantage.

"We can't do that here at all, we're so far off. You don't typically find cars in NASCAR that are two seconds off the pace."

"Now that I've been in it for a while, F1 is like any other large organisation with a lot of history in it - it's got so many restrictions" Gene Haas

It's clear that realising that getting close to F1's top three is currently almost impossible is what has frustrated Haas. He's not the only one of course - as a works team it's even more painful for Renault, while the once mighty Williams and McLaren squads have also been left far behind.

"Probably the frustration for any of the backmarker teams, which I think is a little derogatory how people refer to us, is that none of us can do better than fourth," Haas continues. "That's as far as we're ever going to get. It's like, 'OK, that's it for us'.

"This isn't what we expected. Even in NASCAR, every once in a while a team that has no business winning will win. They can win a fuel mileage race, or they can win a restrictor plate race. They can at least have some hope. We have no hope."

Haas believes that it would take a fairly dramatic development for the F1 status quo to change.

"In racing strange things happen," he says. "You never know when one of the big three will say, 'I quit'. And then all of a sudden there's a door opening, and maybe you can fill that up.

"Or like when back in 2008-09 when all the manufacturers just left, Bernie opened the doors and said, 'Come on in'. Suddenly you get those changes. Not that I'm expecting it, but you never know what can happen in racing.

"I always kind of thought that F1 was an elite series, and to be in it was a very special thing. But now that I've been in it for a while, it's like any other large organisation with a lot of history in it. It's got so many restrictions you just kind of wonder, 'What am I doing this for?'"

So, would Haas really reconsider his team's position if the competitive situation doesn't change?

"Well, if the best we can do is fourth, at some point you've got to scratch your head and say, 'I'm not here to race for fourth forever'," he says.

That's quite an admission from someone who has already pumped an awful lot of money into the championship, and without whom it would have only 18 cars on the grid. And it sends a message to Liberty and F1's bosses to the effect that change has to be forced through.

Like them, Haas wants to see costs reined in, and a level playing field. But he's not optimistic.

"They can't agree on anything, they can't agree on engines, they can't agree on rules, but that's pretty typical for F1 when you get a committee together," he says. "It's like getting 10 people to go through a door, it just doesn't work.

"I can't speak for Liberty but I think they probably thought when they became owners of the series that they were going to have a lot more freedom to do what they wanted.

"But now they've run into the same problems that we all run into, which is that you've got all kinds of rules and agreements, and FIA and FOM and team owners, and you wind up with no one going through [the door]."

"We played by all the rules and did everything they told us to. And now if Force India really is a new team, then why are they being exempted [from having to wait two years to get prize money]?" Gene Haas

Haas's other big frustration at the moment concerns Force India. As a new team, Haas earned no prize money from F1 in 2016, and the team had to pay its dues by completing two full seasons before finally earning equal status with its peers in the midfield this year.

So, Haas is therefore furious that Force India was granted an entry as a new entity for Spa, and yet F1 has decided that it can keep the money earned by the original incarnation.

"Obviously when you race cars you race against a set of rules," he says. "We have the Concorde Agreement, which talks about new teams and how the new teams are supposed to enter the series and what you have to do.

"And we just kind of feel that all we want is for rules to be applied fairly and evenly, and with the same amount of balance between everybody. We don't really know what Racing Point Force India is. Is it a new team?

"Their argument is that it is a continuing team, but there's something in the Concorde Agreement about cessation - when a team stops and a new one begins. There are all these rules about constructors.

"Somehow all these rules are suddenly being cherry picked: 'They're really a new team? We really think they're an old team'. And we're kind of saying, 'Gee whizz, you have to look at the rules, you have to apply them, you have to apply them fairly'. And that's all we want.

"Personally the one that bothers me the most is that two- or three-year rule, where you have to spend two years as a constructor before you're allowed to participate in these things. We played by all the rules and did everything they told us to. And now if this really is a new team, then why are they being exempted from that?"

In Hungary, with Force India's status hanging in the balance, Haas only agreed for the money to be made available if the same organisation emerged from administration.

"I'm not sure why they didn't just buy Force India in totality, which is the agreement we signed in Budapest," he questions. "I think [the Concorde Agreement] talks about cessation as a point, as long as the team doesn't stop, and it continues on racing under the Force India licence, then you just take that team over.

"But you've got the liabilities, all these other legal issues, that suddenly seem to have gone and simply been sidestepped because they were worried about the jobs. I understand, jobs are important, keeping the team alive is important, but passing clear title is very important too, from a legal standpoint."

One of Haas's obvious arguments is that while keeping 20 cars on the grid and 400-plus people in employment was obviously a priority for F1 and the FIA, without his commitment there would now be only 18 cars and a lot fewer jobs.

"We don't want to see Force India go away, but we did everything according to the book, and we certainly don't want someone else sidestepping everything we did over two years, and breaking the line," he says.

"I'm sure Lawrence Stroll is a very smart person, he's extremely wealthy, and he can probably do whatever he wants to do. We don't really wish anything against him, we just kind of feel that we want to rules that we all agree on to be applied evenly and fairly.

"If a few of teams were to drop out it probably would force the issue of how to fund teams" Gene Haas

"We're all in favour of Force India staying around, we certainly don't want to see them go out of business. Quite frankly, we don't even have an argument with Force India, our argument is how FOM has come in and basically said, 'Here's how it's going to play,' and we're saying, 'No it seems to be in conflict with what we understand', and we'd just like to have it vetted out.

"We want to hear back from FOM, what they have to say, and explain it to us in a way that we understand it. We're talking to FOM and exchanging views. We're kind of waiting for them to come back and say, 'Here's our point of view,' and then we'll go on from there."

The Force India distraction aside, is F1 working for Haas commercially? Now that the team is getting a decent slice of the prize money pie, it makes more sense, while his main machine tool business is seeing the benefit of global exposure.

"When we started we had goals to keep it under $100m, and then it crept up to $120million, and now we're close to $140m," he says of the costs. "But at the same time our [F1] revenue this year is something around $50m. So, we're not really spending more than we thought.

"From my company standpoint, we've seen revenues go up several hundred million dollars. We really did cut back on all our other types of advertising, to put it all into F1."

Selling machine tools may be the ultimate aim, but like Stroll, Red Bull's Dietrich Mateschitz and Sauber owner Hans Rausing, Haas is investing in F1 mainly because of a personal passion.

They may have plenty of it, but none of those guys got to be rich by wasting their money - and perhaps they should not be taken for granted.

"That is the bad side of racing, you see people who have spent fortunes in racing and walk away with nothing," Haas reflects. "It's pretty common, so you have to be doing it for the love of the sport. But we're starting to see how racing teams in all venues are looking like.

"The promoters expect to make money as a business, the race tracks all expect to make money as a business and they make money at it, it's almost like the team owners should never make money.

"That business model, how it got that way, we don't know. In NASCAR, the owners are saying everyone else seems to make money, why shouldn't we make money?"

So, what does Haas think will have to change before motorsport - and Formula 1 in particular - took steps to correct the current situation?

"I think it is changing, because in NASCAR a lot of the teams are disappearing," he states.

"[In F1], Force India was almost on the way out, if it wasn't for Lawrence Stroll stepping in and saving them, or [Rausing at] Sauber - those teams would have been gone. The fact that they were saved, saved Liberty Media from having to scramble.

"If a few of those teams were to drop out it probably would force the issue of how to fund teams."