F1 team owners announce expansion with new entry and release defiant statement

Haas

F1 team owners announce expansion with new entry and release defiant statement

Never a dull day!

Chris Deeley

Sunday 9 August 2026 22:28

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Haas have announced an expansion of their racing operation and the hire of a brand new driver for 2027.

American businessman Gene Haas owns one of the two American teams on the F1 grid, but his racing operations go way beyond that – including into NASCAR in the US, where some announcements were made on Saturday at Iowa Speedway.

Joe Custer, president of the Haas Factory Team operation, revealed that the team will be adding a third car to its NASCAR O'Reilly Series setup and hiring Dean Thompson from Sam Hunt Racing to drive it.

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Thompson will join Sheldon Creed and Sam Mayer in the organisation's O'Reilly Series setup, with both well-positioned to make the series' post-season Chase when the regular season ends at Daytona at the end of the month.

Custer also doubled down on the team's top-tier NASCAR Cup Series team, which currently runs just one car on a weekly basis, insisting that they won't be selling and that they have 'unfinished business' at the top level.

Haas president: We're not going anywhere

The NASCAR Cup Series is structured in such a way that while up to 40 cars can start any given race, there are 36 cars with 'charters' – guaranteeing them a start in every race of the year, and a bigger portion of the prize money. Non-chartered entries are frequently not financially viable, generally only entering a handful of races a year, and are forced to qualify their way into the race if there are more than 40 entries in a given week.

Those charters can be bought and sold by the team in possession of them, with questions being raised of late about the possibility of Haas selling theirs and leaving the Cup Series. That, Custer said, will not be happening.

The fact that his son Cole is the current driver of Haas' No. 41 Cup Series car (30th in the standings after 22 races) is presumably unrelated.

"We have unfinished business in the Cup Series as Haas Factory Team," Custer told the media on Saturday morning. "So, no, we are dead committed. Gene Haas is an F1 owner and a NASCAR Cup owner, and also an O'Reilly owner, and we intend to keep it that way.

"His business is strong. He's a friend, a mentor, and also a passionate racer. So, we are going to try to figure out Cup as a single car team, and we got ways to go.

"But stay tuned. Stay tuned, because we're not happy, (but) we're happy with what the trend has been recently. GM believes in us, our owner believes in us, our partners believe in us, our driver believes in us. We've got some cool things happening on the Cup side."

F1 Haas NASCAR