Gene Haas [co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing in Sprint Cup] is edging closer to announcing a technical partner for Haas Formula and it’s apparent that Ferrari is his top choice. ‘We haven’t exactly signed a formal contract but we’re pretty close,’ Haas told Motorsport.com prior to Sunday’s Indianapolis 500. ‘We’re leaning towards Ferrari. They’re more open to what we need to do. It’s not that Mercedes isn’t right for us, it’s just that we need more help than Mercedes would want to do at this time.’ Haas, who was granted a Formula One license last month, was in Indy to support his NASCAR driver Kurt Busch on his Double quest. Haas also visited with chassis builder Dallara during his trip to Indy and acknowledged that the meeting ‘went good’.
‘They all can do it, they all want to do it, they’re all very interested in helping us,’ Haas said. ‘I think they’re looking at it as a good long-time partnership but it just comes down to you have to order things and it takes time to order things and get things scheduled. It just seems that it’s taking longer to accomplish what we wanted to do than we thought. So, it’s taken a couple of weeks but in another week then we’ll definitely know.’ After Haas establishes his technical partners, his focus will shift to driver and designer candidates in hopes of testing come January. However, at this point of the season Haas is accepting the reality that his current schedule of making it to the grid in 2015 is ambitious.(Motorsport)
