The Haas F1 Team had a miserable 2020 campaign, with a combination of an uncompetitive chassis and a weakened Ferrari power unit leaving them well outside the points at most grand prix contested last season.
The American racing outfit may benefit from Ferrari’s 2021-spec power unit, but Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has already made clear that they will be dedicating most of their development resources to their 2022 car, when Formula One’s shake-up of the technical regulations will come into effect.
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“80 percent of his [Haas’ new technical director Simone Resta] time is focused on 2022 and by the end of February it will be 99 percent focused on 2022,” Steiner said earlier this month.
Commenting on the American racing outfit’s upcoming season and the current state of Formula One, team owner Gene Haas said he believes Mercedes’ dominance has made the sport “boring” because most grand prix weekends are now very predictable.
“In 2020 when Ferrari had a reduction in their horsepower, it was pretty obvious that all of the Ferrari-engined cars had horsepower deficits compared to Mercedes, Honda and Renault,” Gene Haas said in an interview with RACER magazine.
“Our boat’s tied to the Ferrari ship, so when they’re going slow we’re going even slower – I don’t think there’s much you can do about that.
“We have no control over the parts we obtain from Ferrari. We have faith that Ferrari can fix the problem and not only does Ferrari have this problem, but so do Honda and Renault – everyone’s at a deficit to the Mercedes engine.
“They built an extremely high performance, high fuel efficiency, durable engine that no other team’s been able to come close to.
“To me, it’s really killed what Formula 1’s all about. More power to Mercedes for being able to dominate so much of the thing, but who wants to go to a race when you know who’s going to win every friggin’ race that’s out there? That just gets boring,” he added.
Other pundits and rivals of the Silver Arrows have voiced similar concerns, but there is no guarantee Mercedes will still have the strongest package this upcoming season, with all other power unit manufacturers bringing upgrades into 2021 and the regulations being significantly changed to reduce rear downforce levels.
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