Scuderia Ferrari and Haas have been at the centre of a growing debate regarding how partnerships between Formula 1 teams work, as several opponents feel that the rules have to be revised in order to avoid the possibility of such collaborations becoming too close.
Haas has been closely linked with Scuderia Ferrari and share a technical partnership with the Maranello team since the American team joined the sport six years ago. As a result, Haas can rely on the Ferrari power units and gearboxes but also the well-known “transferrable parts”, such as suspension pieces and many other components needed to build a Formula 1 challenger. Aerodynamic surfaces and the monocoque are among the elements which cannot be shared.
Haas can also use the Ferrari windtunnel in Maranello to conduct its test and more recently, the Italian side opened a ‘Haas hub’ next to its factory which is mainly staffed by personnel that have moved across from Ferrari and have been working on the car for the 2021 Formula 1 championship. Simone Resta, the former Ferrari head of chassis engineering, previously joined Haas in an undefined role.
This situation his is perfectly legal as both teams have explained that the personnel in the Haas F1 hub in Maranello work solely for Haas and are completely independent of Ferrari, even though they are located in the same place. Haas boss Guenther Steiner explained that, “We have got the FIA at our place more often than you think. They are there to check it out and they want that,” of the monitoring of its operations.
Alpine boss Otmar Szafnauer has been very vocal in his displeasure with this situation, especially after Haas proved to be much more competitive this season. Last championship, Haas was by far the slowest team and ended the year without scoring any points, but Danish driver Kevin Magnussen, who joined the American team this season to replace axed Nikita Mazepin, was able to finish in P5 in the first race of the 2022 Formula one season, the Bahrain Grand Prix, and then also finished in the points zone seven days later at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit:
“It’s a small team that’s done well over the winter from last to sometimes third fastest team,” said Otmar Szafnauer – “I thought that the pecking order would stay almost the same because, over the years that I’ve been in Formula 1, the bigger the regulation change, the more it favors those with know-how and the infrastructure and the tools to exploit the new rules. So it’s a bit surprising that Haas are where they are for a small team. But I trust the FIA will investigate and come to the right conclusion between how similar the two cars are.” – he added.
The Alpine Team Principal feels that, taking into consideration the difficulty of policing the rules for preventing the sharing of car-design information, Formula 1 teams should change the regulation and make the collaborations more transparent: “In an ideal world, the rules are pretty clear and the difficulty is policing. So if the policing of the rules is impossible, then we should change the rules so that they are able to be policed such that the playing field is even. There’s more discussion to be had with the FIA and perhaps a bit of reform on the rules such that they can be policed.” – he added.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff also feels there is the need to rethink the rules to avoid such issues. He referenced the recent situation regarding the transfer of personnel, which has appeared as a result of teams, mainly Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull, toadapt to the cost cap limitations. The budget cap concept has been introduced to Formula 1 in 2021 and dropped to a new baseline level of $140million this campaign, which determined teams to identify solutions for the reallocation of employees.
Like Red Bull did, as explained by team principal Christian Horner, who admitted that this impacted “close to 100” employees, some of which were moved across to sister team AlphaTauri.
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Toto Wolff hinted at concerns about the sharing of information, which is difficult to police. Although it’s more straightforward to check for the sharing of actual design data, knowledge that can be transferred through conversations and other informal means is much more difficult to monitor: “I think it needs to reform because we want to avoid the kind of discussions that we have had from the last few weeks,” said Wolff. “Everybody deserves to perform well and people should get credit when they have done a good job. But some of the job-hopping, or entity-hopping, on the same premises is just creating arguments that are not necessary for the sport. We have Aston Martin in the windtunnel that, two years ago, we had quite a storm about. We have been handling that with the utmost diligence. But going forward, if we were to need to compromise our income ability, we need to do this because none of the teams should be able to cooperate in a way that we’re seeing with some.”
After dominating the sport for almost a decade, Mercedes has now found itself in the situation of having to fight against a much smaller team like Haas in the start of the new season: “Haas has made a huge jump from being last into being solidly into Q3 in Bahrain,” said Wolff. ”So that’s an interesting step. For us, it’s a learning exercise because an organisation we have 1000 people and we’ve been successful in the past. Suddenly, you’re fighting a team that’s much smaller in size, so they must have done a super job.”
The matter regarding team partnerships has been discussed in Formula 1 for many years, with Haas’ move in 2016 one of the factors which led to this flaring up. As Guenther Steiner stated several times, the criticism of Haas tends to ebb and flow depending on how competitive it is.
For the moment there is no indication that the FIA intends to bring any rule changes in this regard, but there is a lot of pressure from several teams for such a direction, especially from Alpine and Mclaren, which has been very critical of these types of partnerships (McLaren remains a totally-independent team which does not have a technical partnership with any other side beyond its Mercedes engine supply). While the FIA is happy Haas is operating within the regulations, any changes for future F1 campaigns that result from such pressure could mean the team has to make changes.
