Gene Haas (full name Gene Francis Haas) is an American businessman and the owner of the Haas F1 Team, the outfit that in 2016 became the first American-owned Formula 1 constructor in roughly three decades. He is founder, president and sole stockholder of Haas Automation, the largest CNC machine-tool manufacturer in the United States. ¹²

Haas was born on 12 November 1952 in Youngstown, Ohio, and moved to the Los Angeles area as a child, where his father designed electrical cabinets for Hughes Aircraft and his mother taught school. He learned machining young, an interest that would define his career. ¹

“Haas submitted his F1 entry interest to the FIA in January 2014 and was granted a licence that April.”

Education and Haas Automation

Haas graduated from California State University, Northridge in 1975 with a degree in accounting and finance, having switched from engineering. He opened a small machine shop, Pro-Turn Engineering, with two employees in 1978, and in 1983 founded Haas Automation to mass-produce a programmable indexer — the HBI-5C — he had displayed to enthusiastic reaction at the WESTEC expo. Inexpensive and programmable, it sold strongly, and the company grew into the dominant US machine-tool builder, with reported worldwide sales exceeding $1 billion by 2014. ¹

NASCAR ventures

Haas entered motorsport in 2002, founding the NASCAR team Haas CNC Racing after acquiring a facility from Hendrick Motorsports. In late 2008 he partnered three-time champion Tony Stewart to form Stewart-Haas Racing, with Stewart taking a 50 percent stake. The team became a Cup Series power, winning the title with Stewart in 2011 — Haas joined him on the podium at Homestead-Miami that November — and again with Kevin Harvick in 2014, before winding down its NASCAR operation at the end of 2024. ¹

Formula 1

Haas submitted his F1 entry interest to the FIA in January 2014 and was granted a licence that April. He delayed the debut to 2016, entering at the Australian Grand Prix as the first American-owned constructor of the modern era and basing the operation across the United States, a UK facility and a deep technical partnership with Ferrari in Italy — a lean model designed to let a newcomer compete on a midfield budget. He remains the team's owner. ¹²³

A legal episode

Haas's record includes a serious legal chapter. He was arrested in June 2006 on charges that included filing false tax returns, pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy to commit tax evasion, was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay roughly $75 million in restitution. He served sixteen months, was released in 2009, and rebuilt both his business and his motorsport ambitions in the years that followed. ¹

Haas Factory Team

After Stewart-Haas closed, Haas retained one NASCAR charter and reorganised the operation as the wholly owned Haas Factory Team, which debuted in 2025 and runs a full-time Cup Series entry. The move kept Haas's name in American stock-car racing even as his F1 team became its most visible motorsport venture. ¹

Bottom line

Haas is a self-made manufacturing magnate who turned a machine-shop fortune into an enduring place in motorsport, lending his name to an F1 team that has survived lean years and, under Komatsu's leadership, become a competitive midfield outfit. ¹²