Haas, Kolles & Stefan GP propose F1 team entries

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In the round-up: Three potential new team entrants have lodged applications with the FIA.

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Geheimnis um 3 F1-Bewerber f?â??r 2015 gel?â??ftet (Auto Motor und Sport, German)

NASCAR team founder Gene Haas, ex-F1 team boss Colin Kolles and former failed entrant Zoran Stefanovich’s Stefan GP have responded to the FIA’s request for new teams.

Haas confirms F1 entry interest (ESPN)

“Haas currently co-owns Stewart-Haas Racing in NASCAR, while Haas Automation is also a large CNC machine tool builder.”

Bernie Ecclestone’s loss of power is the end of an era in Formula One (The Guardian)

Ecclestone: “The minute the court case is over then I’ll be back on the board again.”

Lotus: delays won’t hurt Maldonado (Autosport)

Eric Boullier: “It could take a little bit of time to ensure there is the right communication with his engineers and the team around them. But I don’t think that missing two days of running is going to change anything.”

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Comment of the day

Bernie Ecclestone’s position of power in Formula One is looking increasingly shaky – but who would come after him?

With Bernie, it’s all about the devil you know; who would be the successor in this case? I would love to see F1 fall into the hands of someone who will care about the sport and its fans.

I think most F1 fans gripe about Ecclestone and his ridiculous ideas, but if the next F1 director is just a suit from CVC, is it really going to be any better? Perhaps it will do well under someone with lots of motorsport experience, like Jean Todt, or others like Ari Vatanen (I know he ran for FIA presidency at some point, but lost to Todt). Then again, I don’t know enough about those guys to predict what sort of impact they would have on F1.

Like a lot of things in F1, this will be a ‘wait and see’ situation.
Steven (@Steevkay)

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64 comments on “Haas, Kolles & Stefan GP propose F1 team entries”

  1. Stefan GP? Really? Oh boy.

    1. With financial backing from the Quantum group perhaps?

      1. Probably, yeah. A really solid entry that!

    2. My F1 in Schools team stands a better chance of getting on the grid.

    3. Maybe Stefanovich and Collin Kolles should join forces if they are serious about it, at least that’s the way I see it.

      And Haas certainly seems interesting, it would be a real shame if the FIA lets this opportunity of having a real racing outfit (not just an investment company looking for exposure etc) slip through their fingers.

      1. Kolles would be a better partner for Haas. Stefanovic is a charlatan, and his antics trying to secure a grid position in the past are well-documented. This is the man who tried to buy Lola’s chassis after the 1997 disaster, which really says it all.

        A Kolles-Haas partnership might not be all that bad, actually. Haas wants Dallara to develop a chassis, at least to begin with, and they don’t have the greatest track record. Of course, Kolles is backed by the Romanians, and they might want to run Renault engines rebadged as Dacia …

        1. And at least Haas has the infrastructure and size to be able to support such a project for a while before it gets established and potentially a mid field contender.

          Fully aree that Kolles working together with Haas could work, he has shown already several times that he is able to somehow make ends meet and not be an embarrassment even in dire times. In contrast to conman Stefanovic, who should be kept further from F1 than USF1.

          1. @bascb – Bernie has said that the FIA have had expressions of interest from two teams. It’s possible that he made those comments before he was aware of the Haas entry, but if he was aware of the Haas entry, then it suggests Stefanovic has already been written off.

            That said, it is conceivable that someone is backing Stefanovic and has put him in the place of a figurehead, but it would be a risky move.

      2. I didn’t really know how to react to the headline. I mean, seriously?! It’s like hearing a Mitt Romney joke in 2014 and not a good one. How can these people even still send in their interest and then be considered.
        Haas could have a shot, that might lift the american interest and all, they can pretend to bring in Danica Patrick and whatnot, but Formula 1 is quite a step up from Nascar. They do have a wind tunnel at least.

        1. Formula 1 is quite a step up from Nascar.

          Yes, I’m sure Gene Haas is quaking in his boots at the thought of the mighty empires of Caterham and Marussia.

          Get over your eurocentric viewpoint and realize that a fresh team with real racing background is exactly what F1 needs… and if that team is American, so much the better.

          They do have a wind tunnel at least.

          Yup, one that F1 teams use whenever they can.

          1. I know next to nothing about Nascar but did a quick Google search and apparently the top teams there have a budget around $20 million. You dont need exercise your brain all that much to see why it would be such a big step from there to F1 where Ferrari for example was recently claimed to hace a budget of 250 million € and even Marussia and Caterham over 60 million euros per year.

          2. Hm, I really think you are oversensitive there and see something that was not in the comment @wonderduck.

            Fact is, while these teams do a lot of development work, the basis of NASCAR is a standardised car with limited scope for development allowed (to keep cost in check, no doubt, certainly something NASCAR has managed better than F1).
            So while Gene-Haas might be one of the few racing entities in the US that could be capable of entering F1, its still a big step up for them.

          3. @wonderduck If Haas is only targeting Caterham and Marussia then he’s already sunk. He should quack (pun intended) in his boots at the thought of the money it will take to enter F1 in Europe where they are not engrained, to go up against the current top 3 or 4.

            Don’t get me wrong, I’d love it, and maybe F1 would be more accommodating than they have been to other new teams in the past, and if they had an American driver all the better…I’ll just have to see this come to fruition to believe it.

          4. @Robbie

            If Haas is only targeting Caterham and Marussia then he’s already sunk.

            …and if think that he wouldn’t be a realist for the first year or two, then you might need to look at how F1 works. No new team is going to come into the sport and compete with the Big Four right off the bat… though if it was ever going to happen, it might have been this season.

            @tmekt
            So money is all you need to be successful in F1, eh? Ask Toyota how their experience in the sport went.

          5. Let’s not forget Haas’ involvement with Newman-Haas racing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newman/Haas_Racing Don’t think of Carl Haas as ‘some NASCAR team owner’, he’s done plenty more.

          6. Nevermind, this headache has me remembering wrong things.

          7. @bascb

            the basis of NASCAR is a standardised car with limited scope for development allowed (to keep cost in check, no doubt, certainly something NASCAR has managed better than F1).

            Quite simply, I would stop watching F1 so intently if the cars became standardised. That completely contravenes the philosophy of the sport.

            Which, probably, explains why NASCAR are a great deal better – the technical side is a dull as Jack Dee narrating a documentary about the evolution of the composites used to create optimal-performing sharpener blades (and without jokes present)!

          8. its obvious that if haas has experience in nascar, they can be very valuable in f1: the drivers need something to get to the circuits. it could be taxis, golf carts, nascar cars…

        2. Danika? I doubt she will be considered for 2015. If they’re looking for an all American duo the best qualified would be Alexander Rossi and Connor Daly but that would not form a strong duo.

    4. When you think about it, we all get to laugh at their failure as the team does an HRT. year 1. mechanical failure year 2. getting in drivers and using up more and more money year 3. they get so broke they go bust by the end of that year having scored no points, and would’ve been a hindrance to the other teams that can actually make it somewhere

      1. @kieferh4

        The reason why HRT failed is because they didn’t know how to race and because they had a tiny budget that mean’t Dallara couldn’t really finish their 2010 car.

        Haas has 1. Racing experience and 2. lots of money. So I think they could be more successful.

        1. I know it’s an old one but: the way to make a small fortune in F1 is to start with a big one.

        2. @full-throttle-f1

          1. I don’t count racing experience as just turning left for three hours straight
          2. NASCAR is on the other side of the spectrum to F1. It takes 125,000 (on average) dollars to build one stock car. It takes a tad over 5 million or so to build ONE Formula 1 car.

          But they could prove me wrong. But I give it three years because it took HRT just over four

  2. From the Guardian article by Paul weaver:

    Formula One, for all its superficial success and wealth, is badly run and poorly promoted.

    Couldn’t have put that more succinctly myself.

    1. Same here.

    2. Indeed.

      Next F1 chief should look at how Americans promote their leagues. Basketball isn’t very popular in Britain but they still sell out arenas in London… American Football is basically an American sport but many people still want to see the Super Bowl live…

      1. At the same time, a lot of the promotional issues in Formula 1 come about because the promoters have no idea what they are doing. FOM is not the promoter, and while they could do more to assist the promoters, that does not guarantee that the races will actually be promoted properly.

  3. Great news about new entrants. Will it come to pass though? It would be great to see Haas get on the grid. He is a racer, not a businessman, which in my opinion, is a great thing. Same goes for Collin Kolles.

    1. @jaymenon10 – We will know in about six weeks. The FIA is announcing the successful applicant on 28 February.

  4. Jack (@jackisthestig)
    17th January 2014, 1:05

    R.e. COTD, Alan Gow would have my vote as Bernie’s replacement.

  5. Is he the same Hass from Newman-Hass at Champcar/Indy ?

    It’d be cool to have an american team. However, it’s bound to fail if they base it in the US…

    1. They have a base in Charlotte, while also having a factory in Brussels and a full scale wind tunnel already being used by F1 teams.. they could even hire Alexander Rossi and Conor Daly… chassis design would be started by Dallara (let’s hope it’s not a revived HRT!).

      1. I’m pretty sure Dallara are a renowned car builder – they currently produce stuff for nearly every open-wheel series that isn’t F1.

        The HRT linkup tarnished them a bit, but it’s a blip.

        1. So they only have themselves to beat, in all those single-make series.

          Their Scuderia Italia red cars were only any good on demon qualifying tyres, or when it rained. Even with proper funding (which HRT never had) it doesn’t seem to be the right way to go F1 racing – or Caterham and Marussia would have tried it.

          1. But they’re only looking to have Dallara to start with. Once they’ve got the ball rolling it sounds like they intend to take over full responsibility for chassis design.

    2. I think that was a different Haas, Carl Haas.

    3. Gene Haas of Stewart-Haas Racing and Carl Haas of Newman/Haas and the Lola F1 team are unrelated.

    4. No the Haas in Newman/Haas Racing was Carl Haas.

      Its Gene Haas who’s interested in F1, He is a Nascar team owner currently running Stewart/Haas Racing along with driver Tony Stewart.

  6. I think the last thing the US F1 fan base needs is another USF1, so I hope that Gene Haas and co get it right.

  7. I really didn’t want to start my day by seeing the words ‘Colin Kolles’ and ‘Stefan GP’ being mentioned in relation to F1.

    Haas… he’s done well elsewhere, but his apparent plan doesn’t look promising. Team based in North Carolina, Dallara building the cars. Have Dallara ever built anything in F1 other than crap cars?

    1. Looks like a few third place finishes through 1991:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallara#Formula_One

    2. Well, given that the HRT car really was never the finished article as Dallara had meant it to be (Campos ran out of money even before finishing development of it), I would guess they should be able of something better than that given the funds to do a proper job. It won’t be anyway near the podium off course, but for now it would be good enough if they build a car that is on par with the backmarker teams.

      1. @bascb They might mean Dallara bringing the chassis building technology side of it whilst Haas themselves develop the aero and stuff, but of course with help from Dallara at the beginning. That’s at least how I’d approach it if I was a big NASCAR/Indy team wanting to expand.

        1. I doubt Haas knows much more about aerodynamics for single seaters than Dallara currently do @deanmachine. I would say they let dallara do this car, based on its wide experience with many single seaters, including the bodywork for the indycars and their recent bad experience with HRT. Then Haas can take that up, and start developing the car further with all the knowledge they gain over time.

    3. They also have a base of operations in Brussels.

  8. I allowed myself to get all worked up with what turned out to be USF1’s farcical attempt to create a team, so I definitely won’t be sitting on pins and needles (this time) waiting on Haas Racing Developments’ arrival on the F1 grid. That said, the outfit already has a pretty sophisticated infrastructure in place, and a decent track record in NASCAR. So, who knows? Anything is possible. I wish them good luck, and we’ll wait and see!

  9. I wonder if the FIA would consider taking two teams if two of the entries proved viable. As far as I am aware, they never explicitly ruled out a thirteenth entry.

    Gene Haas seems like the kind of person they were courting all along. The Andrettis are working on Formula E and Roger Penske is exploring Australia at the moment, so Haas fits better since he is not expanding into other series. But going by Adam Cooper’s blog, Colin Kolles has support from the Romanian government, and they have been looking at options for a while. Kolles’ previous adventures in Formula 1 might not have gone well, but he has done fairly well at Le Mans, and he has resources and knowledge at his disposal. If Bucharest is supporting him to try and stimulate the local automotive industry by consolidating their relationship with Renault, Kolles’ bid is going to be pretty solid.

    So while the FIA is probably only going to accept one candidate, I do not think that it is inconceivable for them to take two if both Kolles and Haas could survive in Formula 1. Especially with the Global Cost Cap.

  10. Less teams and more cars per team.

    1. @prof-kirk did you not see that they are trying to cap expenses and actually get it done this time. More cars per team would kill certain teams right now, and only leave the elitist teams at the top (Mercedes, McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari)…also the inflated cost would still keep other potential teams and engine manufactures away.

      1. I’m aware of the budget issues, it just means we can watch three pay drivers instead of only two at each team!

        1. I agree with you. I would love to be proved wrong but I imagine, again, to see Marussias and Catherhams at the back of the field being lapped. F1 is good enough with Ferrari, Lotus, Mclaren, Williams, Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Force India, Sauber. Adding an extra car wouldn’t mean that much to most of these outfits. And it would allow Rookies to actually have a proper chance to shine. Its sad that currently we all get excited by seeing the occasional Jules Bianchi getting into q2 performance, or staying ahead of an out of luck Williams or Toro Rosso. The current state of F1 doesn’t allow for a Toleman-Senna in Monaco scenario… So I’d really see 3 cars per solid teams. Its not elitism: its really about who is committed and solid to be in the sport-or not.

    2. We’ve found Luca Di Montezemelo on F1 Fanatic…

  11. I think most F1 fans gripe about Ecclestone and his ridiculous ideas, but if the next F1 director is just a suit from CVC, is it really going to be any better?

    Exactly my thoughts. I was definitely one of the people who believed that Ecclestone should loosen his hold on F1 because of his outrageous ideas, but he has done a lot for F1. Now that it has happened, I’m very concerned for the sport. Sure he is one tricky businessman, but one that is trying to expand to sport to new markets. Replacing him with another suit from CVC could very well lead to a disaster. Rather can expanding the sport, they might just focus on milking the sport for all its worth.

  12. WilliamB (@william-brierty)
    17th January 2014, 8:28

    Hang on, let’s see if I’ve got this right. Dennis replaces Whitmarsh as the McLaren Group CEO, but not as F1 Team Principal? And that as head of the McLaren Group, i.e. their GT cars and their race team, Dennis will have substantial influence over McLaren’s F1 campaigns in future years?

    Well, even if I have got that wrong, it is in essence seeing Dennis becoming the most powerful figure at McLaren again, which, for me, puts the final nail in the coffin of what was already somewhat unfeasible suggestions of a link between McLaren and Alonso in 2015.

    1. That is right @william-brierty, Dennis takes back the top spot in the McLaren group, after having stepped down to fully focus on Automotive in the last couple of years. Now its time for him to clean up shop and get them back into top form again. Ron would certainly be motivated to keep a close check on the F1 team especially with the work towards the Honda deal next year, and McLaren cooperating with ART in GP2 newly.
      But as there was no mention of Withmarsh, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw him either moved to a different position in the organisation, or leave McLaren altogether and have a new team principle (what about Brawn?).

      On a completely different note, maybe Ron stepping up at the same time when Bernie is weakened, could also mean a new chapter in the game of control of power in F1. I can hardly imagine people like Monti and Dennis (well and Todt too), and possibly Didi Mateschitz, not wanting to grab back a chunk of the power/money for the future.

    2. @william-brierty

      puts the final nail in the coffin of what was already somewhat unfeasible suggestions of a link between McLaren and Alonso in 2015

      Yeah, like when RAI left Ferrari :)

  13. Accidental Mick
    17th January 2014, 9:03

    With Haas, Ecclestone and Dennis all in the news for all the right reasons I might even buy a newspaper.

    1. I can’t keep up with all the news^

      There is no real news for weeks and then loads of stories come in the space of a few hours!

  14. It would be fantastic to get Haas into F1! Originally started and co-owned by Paul Newman – a massive racing fan. What pedigree to have in the sport. And a very strong financial structure.

    I’d be keen to see Kolles and Stefan GP get licenses too. The more on the grid, the merrier.

    And now the FIA need to get rid of their Blue Flag Rule.

  15. I say, let them pay the entry-fee, build their cars and we’ll see on the race weekends whether they are competitive or not. Maybe they will stay in the sport or disappear soon.

  16. Boris Zonjic
    6th March 2014, 11:32

    Hello, i want to tell you that Zoran Stefanovic and his son Vuk Stefanovic are biggest liars and conmans! I worked for them for two and a half years and they didnt payed me for my hard work!! DO NOT TRUST ANYTHING THEY SAY, please, im telling you the truth. All their registered companies, i think 3 of them, has only 1 or 2 employes registered!! They also didnt payed any enginiers that have been working for them. I was desiger, just like two brasilian brothers-car designers who also stayed without any compensation for their designs!! I plan to sue them – Vuk and Zoran Stefanovic! I hope justice will prevail!.

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