How Toyota is helping transform F1’s smallest team
The Race F1 Podcast
The Race Media Ltd
4.5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Haas is Formula 1’s smallest team, but its Toyota partnership is playing a big part in helping it to continue to overachieve.
Scott Mitchell-Malm, who paid a visit to its Banbury facility between the Japanese and Miami Grands Prix, and Edd Straw, who recently attended a Haas TPC (testing of previous cars) test at Silverstone, get together to tell the story of this unique team.
We look at the Toyota deal and how it has led to the creation of the TPC programme, the ongoing driver-in-loop simulator build project and also production enhancements for the team. We also hear from Toyota project manager Pierre Genon, who is tasked with overseeing the way the two companies work together and reveals what’s happened, and what is to come, for this partnership.
There’s also a look at the future, asking whether one day this could be a Toyota works team, if a sale is possible and also how far owner Gene Haas might be willing to go with it.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic. |
| 0:02.7 | The race is on, and has made a promising start to the new regulations, but now in its 11th season |
| 0:17.7 | in F1, how is its Toyota deal helping the team to grow? |
| 0:21.3 | And what realistically is its overall potential, given its unique setup and facilities? |
| 0:26.2 | I'm Ed Strawn, joining me to talk all things Hass is Scott Mitchell Malm. |
| 0:31.3 | Well, Scott, doing something a little bit different because we spent some time with Hass in |
| 0:36.1 | various locations, actually in the gap |
| 0:38.3 | between Miami and whatever the race before that was. It was a long time ago. Japan, that extended |
| 0:43.4 | gap. So good chance to take a deep dive into one of F1's, perhaps less heralded, but in many |
| 0:50.0 | ways most interesting teams. Yes, Hasse is, it feels very much like a, like a proper fixture on |
| 0:57.3 | the grid now, been around for a decade. But still, I think, elements of its challenge and |
| 1:04.7 | how it goes about its business still quite misunderstood. I think that might also go for its eponymous team owner, Gene Hasse, as well. |
| 1:14.0 | We've often talked on this podcast about how Gene maybe has a slightly optimistic view of how |
| 1:22.1 | his team should be performing versus what resources it has and what investment it's had. |
| 1:27.7 | And into a really interesting phase at the moment with obviously the fledgling Toyota technical |
| 1:33.4 | partnership and probably its best driver pairing that it's ever had. |
| 1:38.4 | So certainly had a good start to 2026. |
| 1:41.0 | So loads to talk about and loads to see when we went on our respective jaunts. Absolutely. You visited the factory in Banbury, and a day later I went to the Silverstone TPC test with Gary Anderson. We've already done a tech podcast that we recorded in the garage there at Silverstone, so you can find that in the race F1 tech show. But we're going to be talking about other things, a little bit more |
| 2:00.9 | the broader team. And we've got an interview, in fact, coming up later on with Pierre |
| 2:05.6 | Genan, who is the Toyota project manager, who tell us more about that deal, because the whole |
| 2:10.0 | Toyota thing is pretty significant. But first off, Scott, let's look at Hasse's setup, because |
| 2:16.0 | they're six in the Constructors Championship. |
... |
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