Guenther Steiner has revealed that the Haas F1 Team were unlikely to continue in Formula 1 beyond the 2020 season if a budget cap had not been introduced.
The team, which struggled to ninth place in the Constructors’ Championship in 2020 and scored only three points across the seventeen races, will continue into 2021 with an all-new driver line-up of Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin.
However, had a budget cap not been introduced, the number of teams on the grid would have likely dropped, with team owner and founder, Gene Haas, considering his options.
“He said it’s so difficult, impossible to catch up to the big boys because the money is just too big,” Team Principal Steiner is quoted as saying by GPFans.com.
“We are not a car manufacturer, we cannot justify the amount of money they spend, which is fine. It wasn’t critical, it was just honesty.
“If it’s different, if you can get it done different, fine. Otherwise, we need to look for other things to do in life.”
Steiner freely admits that Haas could have disappeared off the grid at the end of 2020, but the introduction of the budget cap and a better distribution of prize money has seen them sign on to continue.
“Without the budget cap and the new prize fund distribution, I don’t think we would be here this year,” said Steiner. “It doesn’t make sense for a small team to pump money in because you cannot catch up to the big ones.
“You would have to invest too much money which we would never get back. There is no point. At some point you say, ‘hey, I’ve had my fun’, you move on and do something else fun because there is a lot of things you can do with the money that’s fun.
“With the budget cap, if you do a good job, you can break even and if the sport goes well commercially, you could even make a business out of it. It’s a business now but a losing business for most of us here.
“The aim is always to break even or to make money, that would be the best thing. So I think without the budget cap, it would be very difficult that we would be here for the future.”
