No ride-swap plans yet between Haas F1 and NASCAR teams
Haas F1 Team Principal Guenther Steiner admits that the team won’t perform a driver-swap with its Stewart-Haas Racing NASCAR program until it’s F1 program is in shape.
Kevin Magnussen, the 24-year-old Danish racing driver who moves from Renault to Haas F1 for the 2017 season, has been visiting Gene Haas’ factories this week and is very impressed with what he’s seen.
Steiner expected such a reaction.
“People in Europe, they don’t know how much Gene has got or how much he’s managing.
“There’s a history of a successful team. What Stewart-Haas is in NASCAR now, we want to be in the future in F1.”
Like Haas F1 drivers Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez before him, Magnussen has expressed interest in racing a NASCAR stock car following a visit to the team’s Kannapolis factory.
“It’s definitely something I’d like to have a go at one day,” said the Dane. “It’s nice because I grew up in motorsport and you think you know everything, and then you come over here and it’s just so different.
“It’s extremely cool, because it’s very old-school racing but then extremely high technology as well. There’s just as much science behind those cars as our cars.”
However, Steiner says the Haas F1 Team needs to improve before it can begin looking in the prospects of performing a driver swap.
“It’s so difficult because of the schedule that these guys have got,” explained Steiner. “It’s like if you commit to something, we have to do a few tests and we have to manage it money-wise, but the main reason we don’t focus on it is because we need to get better in F1.”
The Haas F1 Team is entering its second season in the sport and, for the second consecutive year, it’s having to build an entire car from scratch following a number of regulation changes heading into the new season.
“I think we are doing well at the moment but I would not make any comment on how good we are until we see the cars going out in Barcelona, or even in Australia at the first grand prix, because there’s no stake in the ground to show where you could be,” added Steiner. “It’s pointless to invest any time in planning something if, once we’re in Barcelona, we say ‘whoa, we don’t need to do that, we better focus on what we are doing because we’re not where we want to be.’”
However, the wait may well be worth it, as Steiner adds that, when the time is right, they may choose to do more than your typical driver-swap.
“There’ve been driver-swaps in F1 and we need to do something a little more special, because more of the same doesn’t work with [the media],” says Steiner. “We need to do a little bit more like swap two cars.
“We need to come up with something a little bit wackier or a little bit cooler, but at the moment the coolest thing for us to do is to do well as Barcelona or Australia.”
While Magnussen wasn’t on hand when his father Jan Magnussen finished 12th place in the NASCAR Cup race at Sonoma in 2010, he was on hand for the All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 2016 and enjoyed what he saw. However, right now the Dane is sure of where his priorities lie.
“My focus is Formula One and that is my only focus, but I’m a passionate motorsport fan as well, NASCAR as well as any other form of motorsport turns me on.”
“I feel extremely fortunate to live my dream and still go for my target, which is to be a World Champion in Formula One one day, and I feel that I can achieve that dream on the path that I am on now.”
