- Haas
First five years about survival - Haas
Gene Haas says the first five years of his Formula One project will just be about surviving as he looks to learn from the mistakes of the sport's smaller teams.
Haas F1 Team will make its debut in 2016 after agreeing a technical deal to receive support and power units from Ferrari. However, Haas is under no illusion as to the challenges his team will face against F1's established teams.
"I think in the first five years it's just surviving," he told CNN. "I don't have any expectations of grandeur that we are going to go out there and win championships. If we could even win one race in five years, I think that would be a tremendous success.
"Just the association of being with Formula One basically takes our brand from nobody to being in the stratosphere. Sooner or later we'll march up. I'm not expecting to beat anybody, just maybe beat the guys at the back."
Of the three new teams that joined F1 in 2010 only Marussia has scored championship points, with HRT folding at the end of 2012 and Caterham's future now looking increasingly bleak. Haas said he has learned from the mistakes of those teams and is confident his team is taking a more structured approach.
"I think the biggest problem they had is that in trying to get to the grid so fast they wound up having to take on partnerships that maybe weren't thoroughly thought out and wound up making a lot of mistakes.
"Inevitably they didn't have the resources or the cars weren't properly put together because they'd rushed things."
Asked why he chose to partner with Ferrari, Haas added: "Ferrari was just more accommodating. Surprisingly, Ferrari wanted to go beyond being just an engine supplier and they were going to actually help us with a lot of the basic structures of the car. "We would be very proud to be a Ferrari 'B-team' because that would certainly teach us how to run in Formula One. We quite frankly will take all the help they can give us, because you can't get any better than Ferrari."
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