Haas F1 boss Guenther Steiner feels their business model has paid off during their maiden Formula One campaign.
The American team signed deals with Dallara and Ferrari that gave them access to as many off the shelf components as the regulations allowed, something many felt was skirting too close to outlawed customer cars.
"I think we can say our business plan worked even if a lot of people questioned if it could work beforehand and said we would be just like one of the other ones who came in in the last years," Steiner told ESPN. "I think we have shown we do what we say we are going to do, and we did the same internally. We said to Gene, 'this will be the cost of this', and we stuck to it. So we didn't have to go back."
With escalating budgets in F1 being the norm, Steiner said that Haas did a good job of keeping their finances in check.
"If you run a business, and I see F1 as a business, if you have to go back every five weeks saying 'oh, I need another two million', it gets old pretty quick," he said. "Then the trust is lost. We didn't do that and I hope we don't ever have to do that."
"Next year the risk is much bigger because of the upgrade but it's like, what do we want to achieve? We will see in February [when winter testing starts] where we are and then you see what you really need to do."
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Bahrain International Circuit - Winter testing
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