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It’s not every day that the owner of a sports team gets to sample what their organization does. Robert Kraft won’t be lining up in a New England Patriots pre-season game any time soon.
Yet motorsport can offer such an opportunity, in a way – one that Gene Haas grabbed with both hands on Friday. He, and his Formula 1 team, were appearing at the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed motoring and motorsport extravaganza for the first time, and to mark the occasion, Haas got behind the wheel of a VF-23 for a run up the iconic hillclimb.
The run was the brainchild of team principal Ayao Komatsu, who drove before Haas on Thursday alongside Toyota factory driver Kazuki Nakajima.
Gene Haas found going slowly the hardest part. Bob McCaffrey/Getty Images
“When Ayao first asked me about driving here at Goodwood, it seemed like an awful lot of work just for an excursion up a hill,” said Haas. “I didn’t know about the Festival of Speed beforehand honestly, but it was intriguing to me, and now I understand why so many fans come here.
“It’s the event to see so many different cars – old and new, not only Formula 1 cars – so it really does offer an opportunity for fans to see cars that they’ve only seen on TV or in the movies. I’m liking the cars from the ’40s and ’50s because it’s amazing that those teams were making cars that went 150mph with the basic tools they had compared to now.”
The run up the hill gave Haas a new perspective of what he’s been backing for the last decade. But while driving an F1 car is a feat in itself, Haas had another challenge to contend with. Grand Prix cars are designed to do one thing: go fast. At Goodwood, that’s one thing he wasn’t doing.
“My first impression of being in the Formula 1 car was that it’s very tight in there,” he said. “There are a lot of nuances you have to learn about the clutch, shifting, and there are a million things going on.
“The hardest thing to do though is to try to drive a very fast car at a very slow speed.”
Haas F1’s 10-year celebrations continue over the rest of the weekend, with race drivers Esteban Ocon and Oliver Bearman both set to appear on Saturday and Sunday.
CLICK HERE to stream the Goodwood Festival of Speed LIVE, or watch on the RACER+ app.
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