Gene Haas believes Manor “was probably one of the best deals out there” but became available after he had committed to building his own F1 team.
Haas entered F1 as a new team at the start of this season, deferring its entry from 2015 in order to have more time to prepare. At present it doesn’t have a commercial deal with Bernie Ecclestone, and Haas told F1i he would have been better off buying an existing team from a financial point of view.
“Well money is important but I think there will be opportunities down the road one way or another, sponsorships etc,” Haas said. “Obviously we would like to be in the top ten but that’s all pretty much laid out exactly how it works.
“In retrospect maybe buying a team, that’s what Bernie recommended – ‘Why don’t you just buy a team?’ – and I look back and I go ‘wow, he was really right about that!’.”
Asked if he now feels buying another team was the way to go, Haas replied: “Well, yes and no.
“If you would have known what was going to happen with the teams and if you could have bought one at the right exact time it all would have worked out. But it’s hard, it’s kind of like you have to make a guess and then the timing would have to be perfect.
“It’s kind of like getting tyres and then the safety car comes out and you just luck out. There’s definitely advantages to having a mature team not only financially but in terms of the infrastructure and stuff. So what we took on was a big challenge.”
With Sauber recently being taken over, Haas admits it is one of the teams he was interested in but actually feels he missed a better opportunity with Manor at the end of 2014, with the team missing the final three races but securing fresh investment just in time for the 2015 season.
“We did look at Sauber. But that was a few years back actually and they were a big number. Then there was Caterham and Manor, I thought maybe Manor was going to go under but then it was reversed, Manor survived and Caterham went out of business.
“So I think Manor was probably a really good opportunity to someone because they had the points, there was only ten teams so they were top ten. So from a financial standpoint Manor was probably one of the best deals out there. But we had already made a commitment so it was hard for us.”
However, Haas acknowledges the competitive benefits he gained by entering his own team and taking time to do so.
“There’s always decisions and sometimes there’s better decisions and sometimes there’s worse decisions. I think we’re OK, we had a lot more time to plan it, we had time to purchase equipment, make agreements with Ferrari, so all that was a big plus. On the negative side it just takes a little bit longer to earn money that way.”
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