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Big teams deserve more money - Haas

Published on 06 Mar 2017 16:29
5
By: Fergal Walsh

Big teams deserve more money, says Haas’ owner Gene Haas, as he disagrees with the fairer distribution of F1 prize money by stating that its larger and more successful teams deserve a bigger amount.

The sport’s new owners, Liberty Media, are expected to change how money is issued to the teams in order to make this fairer and satisfy the Concorde Agreement.

This is likely to be welcomed by the majority of the F1 fraternity, and they may have another reason to smile with the news that the bonus received by Ferrari for being the oldest of the teams could be withdrawn. Haas, however, believes that certain teams should be entitled to extra money.

"I have a lot of respect for Mercedes and Ferrari and Red Bull because they’ve put a lot of money into the sport," he said to Racer. "To sit here and say ‘I as a smaller team deserve more money in the sport’…I’ve never thought that way, even in NASCAR, and that pays a lot less than Formula One does.

"I have to give Ferrari the benefit of the doubt. To say Ferrari doesn’t deserve that Column 3 money, which is because their name is Ferrari…but Ferrari brings an awful lot of customers to these races. So they’re just taking a small portion of the ticket sales for themselves, but I won’t sit here and say they don’t deserve it.

"If it was just Haas, Manor and Sauber showing up to these races, I don’t think anyone would come! I think you need those big names," he added. "If you think about Ferrari, an iconic name, been around forever, that’s a perfect example of someone who achieved stardom because of racing.

"Their primary purpose was building the cars but the racing was what made them famous. I’m kind of trying to follow the same path; I build machine tools but it’s the racing that makes you famous. If you have a Mercedes or Red Bull, those are the guys that really bring the fans in. I think that they’re necessary.

"We need to be careful that we don’t take money away from them to give to a team that maybe doesn’t deserve it. Our challenge is to show that we can compete with those guys and I think if we can do that, it gives us an aura of invincibility that I think people will respect."

Mason Hawker

F1 News Mercedes Ferrari Sauber Manor Motorsport

Replies (5)

calle.itw

Posts: 8,527
Again, better teams, not bigger teams, deserve more money. If you are a big team but fail to produce results, you are bloated and clearly need to fix some things in order to deserve big money.
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- Mar 6 2017 - 17:21
f1fan0101

Posts: 1,804
In the words of Donald Trump: "Wrong"
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- Mar 6 2017 - 17:44
LightIsRight

Posts: 113
Got a bit of a brown and red mark on his nose there...
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- Mar 6 2017 - 18:06
2GRX7

Posts: 108
Clearly, Haas is pushing his political agenda. Here in the States, the sport that's the most popular (American Football) has socialist elements to it. Socialism in Football ultimately give fans of not so popular teams that may have had a bad year, a chance to acquire higher rated athletes capable of boosting those teams to better final results. Don't get me wrong, The Red Bulls and Ferraris should receive a bit more due to the amount of marketing they do for the sport, but not the amounts they're receiving now.
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- Mar 6 2017 - 19:46
Patentprutser

Posts: 390
This is really political b*llsh*t.
The best teams should deserve the most of the golden pot in a reasonable way.
Ferrari isn't the best teams in years, but still gets most out of it.
I agree, Ferrari is iconic, but the 'Silberpfeilen' have also or even a bigger history in race victories.
Red Bull is the strongest marketing team in the paddock, but do they deserve more money than Force India who did a hell of a job last year?
A standard dividing key, pre season defined for all teams by ranking in the teams championship, and not only the first 10!
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- Mar 7 2017 - 07:39