Formula 1: #betterthanredbull? How did that work out for Rich Energy?

Rich Energy began using the #betterthanredbull hashtag well ahead of their 2019 Formula 1 season partnership with Haas. Now having stated that they have terminated their contract with Haas, how did that work out?

Rich Energy formed a partnership with Haas to become the team’s title sponsor for the 2019 Formula 1 season, but after nine of the season’s 21 races, they announced that they terminated their contract with the sport’s lone American team.

They announced that they had terminated this contract for several reasons, including poor performance by Haas and Formula 1 apparently “inhibiting” their business — even though hardly anybody knew who they were before they formed this partnership.

Here is their tweet about the matter.

All Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has stated about the matter is that he really can’t say much. Here is a team statement about the matter.

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Now Rich Energy are reportedly scrambling trying to salvage their relationship with Haas, which makes sense since (a) this relationship never truly ended, according to Steiner, and (b) Rich Energy CEO William Storey reportedly has no authority to end the deal, yet he is believed to have authorized and/or sent the company’s insanely unprofessional tweet about the matter.

Even though there was technically no official termination, this situation has become one huge PR mess that both sides will have to sort through to reestablish any sense of normalcy within their relationship if they are to move forward as partners considering how pathetic Rich Energy’s tweet was to begin with, whether it ends up being true or not.

But regardless of what happens from this point forward, this illustrates one thing about Rich Energy, and that is their never-ending obsession with Red Bull.

They have had an obsession with beating Red Bull years before announcing their sponsorship deal with Haas for the 2019 season back in November of 2018, and since joining Formula 1 via this partnership, this obsession has only intensified.

Just look at what they posted after their first day of preseason testing ahead of the 2019 season.

What is it that Allen Iverson said that one time?

Since day one, it has been clear that Rich Energy’s true desire to compete and be invested in Formula 1 stems from their desire to beat Red Bull — in this case, Red Bull Racing — and quite possibly nothing else.

Through the first nine races of the season, the team that had worked their way up from backmarker status to mid-pack status as “best of the rest” contenders behind Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Scuderia Ferrari and Red Bull Racing since joining the sport ahead of the 2016 season have been struggling mightily.

Haas are nowhere near Red Bull Racing, and they weren’t even anywhere close to them last season when they finished in a team-high fifth place in the constructor standings (419 to 93 in the points battle), and literally nobody but Rich Energy expected them to be close to Red Bull Racing this season.

They never had a flying chance to break into the elite upper tier that has been shared by only Formula 1’s current top three teams for each of the last seven seasons, not even with additional investment from a title sponsor.

But because of Rich Energy’s obsession with beating their so-called “rival”, the frustration that came from getting toasted by the four-time champions week in and week out finally showed itself in the form of a tweet about cutting ties Haas, even when they hadn’t actually done so.

Once again, they even specifically brought up their desire to beat the Milton Keynes-based team in this tweet.

Not that there is any real comparison, let’s do a quick statistical run-down between the two teams just to show how well that #betterthanredbull has worked out for Rich Energy through the company’s first (and perhaps last) nine races in Formula 1 when compared to Red Bull Racing during the same nine-race span.

NOTE: Numbers with decimal points are rounded to two decimal points.

Red Bull Racing

• Constructor standings: 3rd out of 10
• Driver standings: 3rd (Max Verstappen) and 6th (Pierre Gasly) out of 20
• Team points: 169
• Driver points: 126 and 43
• Wins: 1
• Podium finishes: 3
• Top 5 finishes: 9
• Top 10 finishes:  16
• Retirements: 1
• Average starting position: 7.33
• Average finishing position: 6.11
• Average difference: +1.22
• Driver average starting positions: 4.44, 10.22
• Driver average finishing positions: 3.56, 8.67
• Driver average differences: +0.89, +1.56

Rich Energy Haas

• Constructor standings: 9th out of 10
• Driver standings: 12th (Kevin Magnussen) and 17th (Romain Grosjean) out of 20
• Team points: 16
• Driver points: 14 and 2
• Wins: 0
• Podium finishes: 0
• Top 5 finishes: 0
• Top 10 finishes: 4
• Retirements: 4
• Average starting position: 10.78
• Average finishing position: 14.11
• Average difference: -3.33
• Driver average starting positions: 10.22, 11.33
• Driver average finishing positions: 13.00, 15.22
• Driver average differences: -2.78, -3.89

Advantage Red Bull Racing in…everything.

For Rich Energy Haas, the right hashtag is #betterthanwilliams*.

*=sometimes

Let’s not forget that fact that they are the only team to have one of their drivers finish behind a Williams driver in more than one race this season, and Williams drivers are still searching for not only their first points-paying top 10 finish but their first top 14 finish of the year.

If Rich Energy do manage to salvage their sponsorship deal with Haas and remain in Formula 1, there needs to be some serious soul-searching within the two organizations involved in this partnership so that something like what happened on Wednesday doesn’t happen again.

They need to focus on setting and achieving realistic goals and then setting the bar higher once they’ve achieved them. Waltzing into Formula 1 expecting to beat a perennial contender in the first few months solely because you claim to be better than them and you now sponsor a team isn’t the way to approach it whatsoever.