Carl Haas died on 29 June 2016 at the age of 86. In American racing, his name is tied most strongly to Newman/Haas Racing, the team he co-owned with Paul Newman and built into one of the great CART and Champ Car operations. In Formula 1, the name sits somewhere stranger: Haas Lola, Beatrice, FORCE, Alan Jones, Patrick Tambay, and a short mid-1980s attempt to build an American-backed Grand Prix team.
The two Haas stories are often confused, mostly because Formula 1 enjoys reusing names without warning. Carl Haas had no connection to the Haas F1 Team that entered the championship in 2016 under Gene Haas. Carl’s F1 involvement came three decades earlier, when he put together Team Haas (USA) with backing from Beatrice Foods, a Ford engine plan and former McLaren figure Teddy Mayer.
Beatrice, FORCE and a confusing Lola badge
The cars were widely called Haas Lolas, but the label was messier than it looked. Lola’s name appeared through Haas’s long association with the company, yet the Formula 1 chassis were designed by FORCE, the Haas-owned British operation. The THL initials stood for Team Haas Lola, a name that managed to be both memorable and slightly misleading.
The team coaxed 1980 world champion Alan Jones back into Formula 1 near the end of 1985, then ran Jones and Patrick Tambay in 1986. The project had ambition and some serious personnel. Ross Brawn and Adrian Newey both passed through the organisation, which is the sort of detail that makes a failed team look far better in hindsight than it did in the constructors’ table.
The problem was money and timing. Beatrice’s corporate backing weakened after management changes, and the Ford engine plan did not become the stable foundation the team needed. Haas Lola scored points in 1986 but did not survive into a proper long-term programme. Carl Haas’s wider racing life was far more successful, but his Formula 1 chapter remains distinctive: an American-backed outfit, a confusing constructor identity, a returning world champion and a technical staff list that looks unusually expensive decades later.
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