Formula 1: Rich Energy developments show it was never about Haas’ performance

By Asher Fair | Jul 12, 2019

LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 07: The car on display during the Rich Energy Haas F1 Team livery unveiling at The Royal Automobile Club on February 07, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Bryn Lennon/Getty Images) /

The developments within the Rich Energy case show that their initial tweet never had anything to do with Haas’ performance in Formula 1.

Seemingly out of the blue, Rich Energy, the British beverage company that signed a contract to serve as the title sponsor for Haas ahead of the 2019 Formula 1 season, tweeted on Wednesday that they had ended their relationship with Formula 1’s lone American team.

Rich Energy blamed Haas and Formula 1 in general for this abrupt departure, blaming the former for their “poor performance” while citing the “PC attitude” and “politics” of the latter as “inhibiting” their business.

To be fair, Haas have struggled in their first season with Rich Energy as their title sponsor. Through the 21-race season’s first nine races, they have only managed to score 16 points on four top 10 finishes, and they are the only team that have had a driver finish behind a Williams Racing driver in more than one race.

As a result, they sit in ninth place out of 10 teams in the constructor standings ahead of only the lowly Williams, which are still seeking their first top 14 finish of the season.

However, the recent developments regarding this case show that the reason for Rich Energy sending this tweet never actually had anything to do with Haas’ performance.

Here is this tweet, which effectively made Haas and Formula 1 the scapegoats for a far more complex situation.

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This situation has taken several twists and turns, which you can read about in more detail here, many of which in the form of damage control by Rich Energy after such an unprofessional tweet.

But a recent development regarding Whyte Bikes effectively proves that this was never about Haas’ “poor performance”.

Rich Energy, likely in an attempt to quiet the rumors and speculation about what is going on, tweeted what they referred to as “the actual situation” earlier on Friday. The did so by providing an email sent on behalf of Haas from their lawyer, Jeremy Courtenay-Stamp, to Neville Weston, one of Rich Energy’s shareholders who supposedly wants to oust Rich Energy CEO William Storey from his position, which seems to be the premise behind this entire mess.

Here is this email.

In this email, there was a section about a logo, as Whyte Bikes won their action against Rich Energy, Story and Staxoweb, Rich Energy’s logo designer, back in May as a result of the fact that Rich Energy’s logo is nearly a carbon copy of Whyte Bikes’ logo. An ensuing court order confirmed that these three defendants needed to pay £35,416 by yesterday, and they did not end up paying.

So Rich Energy just so happened to terminate their sponsorship agreement over “poor performance” one day before this money was due?

They just so happened to wait until 10 days after the notable “poor performance” during which they lost to Williams before terminating this agreement?

No, they didn’t “just so happen” to do anything.

They assumed that this sponsorship agreement would come to a halt, and they wanted to blame Haas for it before the truth got out. Why else would they be in the process of trying to salvage the relationship between the two parties?

This was only ever about money and saving face.

The company’s deal with the team was shady to begin with, primarily from a financial perspective, and this whole situation only vindicates the suspicions that many fans shared going into the season.

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This only adds to the plethora of reasons why Haas need to get as far away from Rich Energy as possible, especially from a Formula 1 standpoint, because if they don’t, they are likely only setting themselves up for future disasters that they simply cannot afford.

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