Why the Haas factory team chooses Chevrolet

The president of the Haas Factory team, Joe Custer, has always planned a moment of “intestine check” this season And the results brought them to Chevrolet next season.

During the first year following the power of four cars Racing Stewart-Haas The consolidation in the Haas factory team to a single Custer car expected a challenge, but is also under the mandate of the owner of the Gene Haas team to be more competitive.

Driver COLER CUSTERAlso Joe’s son, is 33rd in the Cup series classification, but also has a curriculum vitae winning of the championship to suggest that there is more to unlock in the right circumstances. Thus, during the summer, the elder Custer contributed an in -depth analysis of the place where they were compared to the expectations of the first year.

“Well, for us, the results speak for themselves on the side of the cup,” said Custer at Motorsport.com on Wednesday. “This is a sport -based sport and focused on results and we have to be better. Candling, we expected to assess where we were by a certain point this year and we found reasons of optimism, but we also needed a reality control in other areas. ”

Operating almost as a start-up, the Haas Factory team has concluded an alliance with RFK Racing, but by shopping this summer, Custer has found a better agreement with familiar faces in the General Motors circle.

“I mean that Ford has literally did everything they say to say,” said Custer. “This is just a question of what we found when we evaluated our strengths and weaknesses, made our deep dive and decided that we wanted a certain degree of synergy and alignment with regard to our strengths and what we have not done as well.”

Haas factory team logo on equipment (1)

(Re) Enter Rick Hendrick.

Gene Haas first entered Nascar in the 1990s as a partner Hendrick MotorsportsNot only as a sponsor but also as a key partner, providing its CNC store and its metal cutting expertise to the organization of the emerging cup. Haas then started his own team in 2003 with the support of Hendrick, a relationship that has extended to the SHR years and the two championships with Tony Stewart And Kevin Harvick.

It is therefore a kind of return to the future to custer.

“Times have changed, but what has not changed is the relationship,” said Custer. “It is a healthy relationship. Rick has always appreciated a good manufacture and our heritage is in CNC machines and the cutting of metals.

“Dive more deeply, we have tools in our shop that have value and engineering tools to increase what they already do. There is a friendship and mutual confidence that make sense to us. ”

The Haas factory team will continue to operate from the old Stewart-Haas store in Kannapolis. Custer does not expect to have an office on the Hendrick campus in Concord, but provides that there is a lot of trips in both parties between the two parties as they help each other.

In the end, Haas just needed better data to unload with the type of speed they will need at one time with a considerably reduced practice and a single racing platform at source.

“Where we needed help, it’s data,” said Custer. “We need simulation tools to have a predictable car on the track. Ideally, it unloads the way we expect it to be according to what we have developed in simulation. ”

Cole Custer, Haas Factory Team Ford

Photo of: Samuel Corum / Getty Images

And that simply was not the case this season.

Another element of the activity of the Haas factory team that this decision will affect is the company’s customer car program. Haas Services Development and repair of the chassis for SIEG Racing and AM Racing. A partnership with Chevrolet means narrower coordination with JR Motorsports And Hendrick at the Xfinity series, but Custer says it is too early to know what it means for the customer program.

“We explore our options with our partner teams,” said Custer. “They might want to stay with Ford and they might want to explore their options. They must decide the best course of action for them and whatever the decisions they make, we will certainly do what we can to help them. ”

Custer says that HFT has a “symbiotic relationship” with its partner teams and that they are just as precious to them as Vice Versa. He plans to have this program next year, but finally says what it will look like will be shaped by all these conversations in the coming months.

With certainty, Sam Mayer and Sheldon Creed will be back in flagship cars No. 41 and 00, respectively. Custer also expects his son to be back in car n ° 41 of the Cup, while saying that if other opportunities should come to the champion of the XFINITY 2023 series, he would be free to explore them.

“He has a career to watch,” said the elder Custer. “We must constitute a team for him in order to best present his capacities. We are at the moment in the sense that our objectives and its own are pointed out in the same direction. It could always change. This is how the race is.

“In the end, if you improve, everyone is generally happy and if you are not, not everyone is not.”

More importantly, Custer thinks that it is possible to build a championship competitor under this model, a car satellite team, although with its own independent shop and its machining capacities. In fact, he thinks that it is actually simpler than the line of furniture has accomplished with Martin Truex JR. in 2017.

Custer thinks that it is simpler in one direction because they are in the region of the Grand Charlotte and they have their own capacity to strengthen car and high performance. The decision to join Chevrolet and Hendrick has just been reduced to data, engineering and CFD.

“I think it can be done,” said Custer. “I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t think we could. Has it still been done? Certainly not with this car, but it is also the attraction for me, which motivates me, that I think we can win races and compete for a championship. ”