Ferrari juniors not financially viable for Haas
Gene Haas has suggested that his team is unlikely to provide seats for Ferrari junior drivers in the near future due to the financial drawbacks of such an arrangement.
Given the technical partnership that Haas shares with Ferrari, it was anticipated that the American team could provide potential race seats to prominent members of Ferrari’s academy.
However, with Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen to be retained as Haas’ 2018 driver line-up, speculation on the matter has been quelled.
While team owner Gene Haas has been reluctant to fully rule out the possibility of fielding Ferrari juniors in the future, he suggested that the concept would not be economically viable.
“I don’t think we rule it out but from a business model it doesn’t really make a lot of sense,” he said.
“There’s no secret that it costs $60m to put a car on the track for the season and if someone gives you a driver and they’re going to pay you five or six million dollars, there’s $55m deficit there somewhere, so it doesn’t really make sense to want to run a partner or a paid driver for compensation.
“I think our point of view has always been that we need to obtain points and that’s how we generate moving forward and making money, so that’s our business model.
“I think Ferrari respects that and based on that, if there’s some mutual agreement that we could come to we probably would be more open to that.”
Currently at the forefront of Ferrari’s young driver programme is Formula 2 championship leader Charles Leclerc, alongside last year’s GP2 series runner-up Antonio Giovinazzi.
Both are candidates for Formula 1 race seats in 2018. Giovinazzi deputised for the injured Pascal Wehrlein at Sauber in the opening two rounds of this season, while Charles Leclerc is en route to a dominant F2 championship title.
Current speculation links Leclerc with a potential seat at Ferrari-powered Sauber next season. He is set to participate in four FP1 sessions with the team during the remainder of the 2017 campaign.