Haas F1 reiterates team is not for sale after aligning with Toyota on technical partnership

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Haas F1 reiterates team is not for sale after aligning with Toyota on technical partnership

2024-10-26 08:14 Last Updated At：08:21

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The first-year team principal of Haas reiterated the Formula 1 team is not for sale even if new technical partner Toyota wanted to buy the organization.

Ayao Komatsu dismissed the idea Friday at the Mexico City Grand Prix when asked if Toyota had first right to buy should team owner Gene Haas decide he wants to sell the team. Some believe that the 71-year old is easing out of racing after he announced in June that Stewart-Haas Racing, which Haas co-owns, is scaling down from four Cup Series cars to one at the end of this NASCAR season.

“To start with, Gene’s not selling the team. Every single time he’s asking me, ‘How can we go better? What can we do to make the car go faster?’ He’s not interested in selling,” Komatsu said. “I believe he had so many offers, actually, but he refused every single one of them. So the team’s not up for sale.”

Michael Andretti made multiple overtures to purchase Haas in his failed bid to acquire an F1 team, and Haas has consistently maintained he's not pulling out of the series even though his team is among the least competitive on the grid.

Haas is seventh of 10 teams in this year’s F1 constructors’ championship standings.

Toyota announced two weeks ago it is returning to F1 after 15 years as Haas' technical partner. Haas debuted Toyota branding on its cars with last week's United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, and Toyota said its racing division will provide “design, technical and manufacturing services” to the North Carolina-based team.

This doesn’t mean a return of the Toyota works team which raced in F1 for eight seasons until 2009, however.

Haas will still race under its own name, and Toyota isn’t going to be supplying engines like it did for other teams in the 2000s. Haas already has an agreement to use Ferrari engines through 2028 as part of an existing partnership from Haas’ first F1 season in 2016. Haas previously extended its Ferrari deal in July to cover the new F1 regulations coming in 2026.

The deal extends Haas’ strategy of relying on outside partners for much of the work that other F1 teams do in-house. Since its 2016 debut, the U.S. team has worked closely with Ferrari — even basing its design office in Ferrari’s hometown of Maranello, Italy — and relies on Italian race-car builder Dallara to construct its cars.

“Ferrari and Dallara has been amazing partners since day one. And then as you can see, you know, Ferrari, obviously, the PU partner, gearbox, suspension, hydraulics — those areas, obviously, Toyota’s not touching,” Komatsu said. “The area that Toyota’s touching is the area that we don’t get support from Ferrari, and that we’ve been doing it on our own. That really just adds to our capability and then a chance to understand the car better so that we can make our team more competitive.”

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Israel launches strikes on military targets in Iran, escalating Mideast wars

2024-10-26 08:16 Last Updated At：08:20

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israel launched airstrikes early Saturday on what it described as military targets in Iran in retaliation for a ballistic missile assault Oct. 1, officials said. There was no immediate information on damage in the Islamic Republic.

The attack, threatened for weeks by Israel, comes as the Middle East sits on the precipice of a regional war more than a year after an initial attack by the militant group Hamas on Israel. In the time since, Israel has launched a devastating ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and an invasion of neighboring Lebanon, targeting militants long armed and aided by Tehran.

Israel's military described the attack Saturday as “precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” without immediately elaborating.

“The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since Oct. 7 ... including direct attacks from Iranian soil,” an Israeli military statement said. “Like every other sovereign country in the world, the State of Israel has the right and the duty to respond.”

In Tehran, the Iranian capital, the sound of explosions could be heard, with state-run media there initially acknowledging the blasts and saying some of the sounds came from air defense systems around the city.

A Tehran resident told The Associated Press that at least seven explosions could be heard, which rattled the surrounding area. The resident spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

International flights began diverting around western Iran as news of the strikes broke, flight-tracking data showed.

Meanwhile, state media in Syria described its air defenses as targeting “hostile targets” there as well.

Iran has launched two ballistic missile attacks on Israel in recent months amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip that began with the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That initial attack killed some 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage back to the seaside enclave.

In the time since, more than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to local health officials who don't delineate between civilians and combatants. Israeli military operations in the West Bank in the time since have killed hundreds more.

Israel also has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon and a series of punishing airstrikes that have rattled that country.

The strike Saturday happened just as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was arriving back in the U.S. after a tour of the Middle East where he and other U.S. officials had warned Israel to tender a response that would not further escalate the conflict in the region and exclude nuclear sites in Iran.

White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement that “we understand that Israel is conducting targeted strikes against military targets in Iran” and referred reporters to the Israeli government for more details on their operation.

Two U.S. officials said the U.S. was notified by Israel in advance of the strikes. They said there was no U.S. involvement in the operation. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing operation.

Israel had vowed to hit Iran hard following a massive Iranian missile barrage on Oct. 1. Iran said its barrage was in response to deadly Israeli attacks against its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and it has promised to respond to any retaliatory strikes.

Israel and Iran have been bitter foes since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Israel considers Iran to be its greatest threat, citing its leaders’ calls for Israel’s destruction, their support for anti-Israel militant groups and the country’s nuclear program.

Israel and Iran have been locked in a yearslong shadow war. A suspected Israeli assassination campaign has killed top Iranian nuclear scientists. Iranian nuclear installations have been hacked or sabotaged, all in mysterious attacks blamed on Israel. Meanwhile, Iran has been blamed for a series of attacks on shipping in the Middle East in recent years, which later grew into the attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels on shipping through the Red Sea corridor.

But since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, the battle has increasingly moved into the open. Israel has recently turned its attention to Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began. Throughout the year, a number of top Iranian military figures have been killed in Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon.

Iran fired a wave of missiles and drones at Israel last April after two Iranian generals were killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike in Syria on an Iranian diplomatic post. The missiles and drones caused minimum damage, and Israel — under pressure from Western countries to show restraint — responded with a limited strike.

But after Iran’s early October missile strike, Israel promised a tougher response.

Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Lolita C. Baldor, Farnoush Amiri and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.