MEXICO CITY — (AP) — The first-year team principal of Haas reiterated the Formula 1 team is not for sale even if new technical partner Toyota wanted to buy the organization.
Ayao Komatsu dismissed the idea Friday at the Mexico City Grand Prix when asked if Toyota had first right to buy should team owner Gene Haas decide he wants to sell the team. Some believe that the 71-year old is easing out of racing after he announced in June that Stewart-Haas Racing, which Haas co-owns, is scaling down from four Cup Series cars to one at the end of this NASCAR season.
“To start with, Gene’s not selling the team. Every single time he’s asking me, ‘How can we go better? What can we do to make the car go faster?’ He’s not interested in selling,” Komatsu said. “I believe he had so many offers, actually, but he refused every single one of them. So the team’s not up for sale.”
Michael Andretti made multiple overtures to purchase Haas in his failed bid to acquire an F1 team, and Haas has consistently maintained he's not pulling out of the series even though his team is among the least competitive on the grid.
Haas is seventh of 10 teams in this year’s F1 constructors’ championship standings.
Toyota announced two weeks ago it is returning to F1 after 15 years as Haas' technical partner. Haas debuted Toyota branding on its cars with last week's United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, and Toyota said its racing division will provide "design, technical and manufacturing services" to the North Carolina-based team.
This doesn’t mean a return of the Toyota works team which raced in F1 for eight seasons until 2009, however.
Haas will still race under its own name, and Toyota isn't going to be supplying engines like it did for other teams in the 2000s. Haas already has an agreement to use Ferrari engines through 2028 as part of an existing partnership from Haas' first F1 season in 2016. Haas previously extended its Ferrari deal in July to cover the new F1 regulations coming in 2026.
The deal extends Haas’ strategy of relying on outside partners for much of the work that other F1 teams do in-house. Since its 2016 debut, the U.S. team has worked closely with Ferrari — even basing its design office in Ferrari’s hometown of Maranello, Italy — and relies on Italian race-car builder Dallara to construct its cars.
“Ferrari and Dallara has been amazing partners since day one. And then as you can see, you know, Ferrari, obviously, the PU partner, gearbox, suspension, hydraulics — those areas, obviously, Toyota’s not touching,” Komatsu said. “The area that Toyota’s touching is the area that we don’t get support from Ferrari, and that we’ve been doing it on our own. That really just adds to our capability and then a chance to understand the car better so that we can make our team more competitive.”
___
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing