FIA controllers welcome
Haas team boss counters criticism of the “white Ferrari”
By Martin Armbruster and Felix Görner
4/20/2022, 3:07 p.m
For Haas, the season is going much better than before. Mick Schumacher can’t score yet, but Kevin Magnussen already has twelve points. This is due to the oversized proximity to the world championship leader Ferrari, some competitors doubt. Team boss Günther Steiner offensively contradicts this.
Haas is just a B-Team from Ferrari, the Haas car is a “white Ferrari”. These are the allegations against the US racing team. In fact, not only is a Ferrari engine installed in the Haas car, Haas also gets the gearbox and many other components from the Scuderia. Last year, the team even moved a company headquarters to Maranello, right next to Ferrari.
But there is nothing to the allegations, says Haas team boss Günther Steiner in an ntv interview: “What we do, we do everything according to the regulations.” That means: Haas does not screw more than those Ferrari components to his car that are allowed according to the regulations. Haas also does not exchange any data with Scuderia, says Steiner. The office doors between the companies in Maranello are closed, he emphasizes before the race in Imola (Sunday, 2 p.m., on RTL and in the ntv.de live ticker).
Steiner is so convinced of his team that he deliberately invites the FIA, the world motorsport association: “I said to the FIA: ‘Guys, please come and check every day, because we do everything according to the rules.’ Today, for example, the FIA is with us in Maranello, checking. They are welcome, if they find something, we will improve it,” said Steiner. He is sure: “But they will not find anything that we have copied a car. They come too often for that. And I told them: ‘Check what you want, you can come when you want, you are always welcome. ‘”
There is also a lot at stake for Ferrari
Among other things, the FIA inspectors at Haas would check “all IT systems”, “whether we have any links to Ferrari, whether we share data,” said Steiner. However, his team will hardly be “so stupid to take a risk here”. In addition, “a lot is at stake” for Ferrari, the South Tyrolean pointed out. “If you think back to the Mercedes-Racing Point case, Mercedes was also involved and Ferrari can’t afford it and we don’t want to afford it.”
In the 2020 season, the then Racing Point team, now Aston Martin, practically copied its car from Mercedes, using the Silver Arrow of the year 2019 as a template. The FIA later declared the car illegal after a protest from Renault, in detail it was about brake ventilation. The world association deducted 15 World Championship points from the team and also investigated a possibly illegal supplier role for Mercedes.
Haas’ leap in performance is generating the same rumors surrounding Haas this season. Last year they had no chance at all, Mick Schumacher and his then team-mate Nikita Mazepin just followed behind. Schumacher may still be pointless this season, but Kevin Magnussen picked up ten points in race one in Bahrain by finishing fifth, plus two in Saudi Arabia. All because of being too close to the current industry leader Ferrari? “For us it is clear that Formula 1 should be a championship of ten – or eleven or twelve – constructors. This means that there should be no transfer of intellectual property related to core performance,” criticized McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl recently the share of Ferrari DNA in the Haas.
Steiner contradicts: “Criticism always comes up when we have a good car. It’s gotten boring, like warmed up soup, it’s always the same, everyone tries to invent something that isn’t there,” he thundered. “We’re doing it according to the rules. It’s getting tedious, this criticism and this constant complaining. You have to have decent arguments when you complain, you can’t always say the same thing,” otherwise it’s like a record with a crack that is constantly repeated. According to Steiner, he doesn’t give much thought to the FIA investigations.