Haas Debuts Formula One Racecar

The VF-16 racecar, the Haas F1 Team’s first racing vehicle, has arrived. The car was revealed February 21 to the world motorsport press at the Circuit de Barcelona -Catalunya, where it began pre-season testing February 22.

Of all Haas machines with VF nomenclature, this four-wheeled, Ferrari-powered model has been perhaps the most eagerly anticipated since Gene Haas stated his intentions to enter the world’s greatest race series less than two years ago. Haas Automation, Inc. (Oxnard, CA), the company he founded in 1988, is Haas F1 Team’s principal sponsor and the genesis of the F1 venture.

“From an international standpoint, Formula One is the highest echelon of racing, and we build the highest-quality machine tools,” said Haas, who has grown the company into the largest machine tool builder in North America, with more than $1 billion in annual sales. “When you hear the words Formula One you know exactly what they stand for: a global racing series that invests in the latest technology and attracts the best talent in engineering and design.We have an excellent reputation in the U.S – for reliability, innovation, and value for money – and I want that reputation to continue to grow worldwide. Connecting us with F1 in name and in practice is the best way to grow our business, and elevate us as a premium global brand.”

The dark grey, light grey, and striking red-toned livery of the VF-16 was derived from their CNC vertical and horizontal machining centers, turning centers, and CNC rotary tables and indexers: a ‘complete’ line of high-productivity CNC products. The Oxnard-based company employs around 1,300 people and exports approximately 60 percent of its annual production to more than 60 countries. There are close to 185,000 of their CNC machine tools installed around the world, supported by a network of 170 Factory Outlets (HFOs) – independently owned sales and technical service businesses, dedicated to providing industry-leading support, wherever a customer is based.

The VF-16 demonstrates the company’s – and Gene Haas’ – commitment to technology and innovation to a passionate, global audience, many of whom are already customers, or who perhaps work in the precision engineering and manufacturing sectors. “Just as our CNC machine tools evolve continually, becoming better and more efficient as time goes by, our methodology behind the VF-16 was to make it the best evolution of a good F1 car,” explained Guenther Steiner, the team principal of the Haas F1 Team. “As we’re a new team, we studied what the successful F1 teams were doing, so we had a strong baseline for the direction we needed to go with our design.

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