Haas won’t increase its budget to match cap

Formula 1’s budget cap for 2021 may be $175 million but that doesn’t mean Haas will meet it, says team boss Guenther Steiner.

One of the smaller teams on the F1 grid, the American outfit reportedly spent $150 million last season.

That is a long way off of the $484 million Mercedes laid down to win a sixth championship double.

However, it is also some way off the $175m budget cap that Formula 1 will introduce come 2021.

Steiner, though, is adamant that Haas, who will be without a title sponsor in 2020 after its relationship with Rich Energy imploded last season, won’t up the spending to match the cap.

“We’ll stay with what we have got,” he told RaceFans.

“We are quite conservative with these things. We are not going to do that.

“We do what we are doing and try to do it as good as possible.

“Because the next thing is the teams which now increase [their spending], then when [the cap] gets decreased again, they are the guys which then cry about it: ‘oh, we increased it’.

“Yeah, I mean, you knew it was coming.

“If you have no vision and you just do what is convenient at the moment maybe that doesn’t work.”

Haas will continue with Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean for the 2020 season.

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