Formula 1: The Rich Energy-Haas situation is all about William Storey

The Rich Energy-Haas title sponsorship situation that has dominated Formula 1 over the last week is all about one man, Rich Energy CEO William Storey.

The ongoing debacle involving the Haas Formula 1 team and title sponsor Rich Energy is nearly one week old, and it has shown no signs of slowing down.

However, one thing that we now know is that it really isn’t about the British beverage company that signed on as the title sponsor for Formula 1’s lone American team ahead of the 2019 season.

It is about one man, and that one man is Rich Energy CEO William Storey.

On Wednesday, July 10, a tweet emerged from the Rich Energy Twitter account signifying that after only nine of the season’s 21 races, the title sponsorship agreement between the company and Haas had been terminated.

Here is this tweet.

But the following day, Haas team principal Guenther Steiner released a statement saying that Rich Energy were still the team’s title sponsor.

In a response to Rich Energy’s shareholders subsequently stating that they were attempting to salvage their relationship with Haas after such a childish tweet by who they described as a “rogue” individual, a statement that effectively verified Steiner’s statement that this relationship never ended, a statement made by Storey was shared on the team’s Twitter account.

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This tweet, first thought to be a tweet denouncing the statement on the company’s Twitter page stating that their title sponsorship agreement with Haas had been terminated, turned out to be Storey denouncing the shareholders’ statement that they were attempting to salvage this contract as “ludicrous” and “risible”.

Storey was later confirmed as the “rogue” by Neville Weston, who is one of Rich Energy’s shareholders who have grown tired of Storey’s style and have been attempting to remove him from his position as the CEO of the company.

But let’s be honest; everybody knew from the start that Storey was the rogue, as evidenced by the rumors, later proven true, that he had sent and/or authorized the original tweet about this supposed severance of ties.

In fact, this has been made clear several times now, even with the initial misunderstanding of his tweet about the “ludicrous” and “risible” shareholders’ statement, and that just makes the situation look a lot worse.

Storey referred to Haas as a “milkfloat” at the back of the grid and stated, once again, that the title sponsorship agreement was off, and on Rich Energy’s Twitter page, he then ripped them for running the company’s branding in the British Grand Prix since they had reportedly been “sacked”.

He then harassed them again on the company’s Twitter page, again using the “milkfloat” reference, when both of their drivers, Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen, were forced to retire early on in the British Grand Prix after a first-lap accident with one another.

Hours later, he released another statement on this Twitter page calling Haas liars, even though the message attached to his statement in a picture effectively vindicated the team.

Weston stated a lot more about the matter in an interview with RACER, but one thing stands out, and that is the sentiment that this is truly about Storey and not Rich Energy as a whole, and so far, as easy as it has been to rip the company in general for this debacle, nothing has suggested otherwise.

Here is what Weston stated.

"“You’re tweeting something that you say you’re doing that’s illegal…These are company assets, you don’t have the assets to it. If you were trying to do that you are just basically admitting to doing something that’s illegal. There’s facts and there’s what he says. I want to be really clear, until we get an injunction or get him shut out of those social media accounts that he’s set up and has the passwords to, he’s probably going to keep doing this stuff for a while, and they are not the views of Rich Energy and the majority shareholders, which is why we made that statement.”"

When Storey revealed what he referred to as “the actual situation” on Twitter this past Friday, he did so by showing a letter sent on behalf of Haas to Weston.

This letter, coupled with what Weston stated in this interview, with what Storey has continued doing over the last several days and with the fact that nobody within Rich Energy, at least not publicly, has defended their (Storey’s) actions and words is just the icing on the cake.

All eyes in the Formula 1 world will be on Rich Energy CEO William Storey until something happens to alter this strange course of events that is now entering its seventh consecutive day.