Big teams deserve more money - Haas

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another reason to smile with the news that the bonus received by Ferrari for being the oldest of the teams could be withdrawn.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