Legendary team owner Carl Haas dies at age 86 ? MotorSportsTalk Carl Haas, longtime Cart and Indy car owner and importer of Lola into the USA has passed away.
Yes, Whisky, they are; AJ, Big Dan, Parnelli, Roger Penske, & others are all in their eighties. We have gotten over 1/2 century of entertainment/fellowship/friendship (if you got to know them at all) out of these gentlemen. So to these American folk heroes I express thanks for enriching my life.
I met him a few times. I used to have a side job working for a company called Graphics in Motion, and they did most of the graphics for HAAS. Racing is a strange business to be in!! RIP
The cars Haas imported had quite an effect on North American racing: The T70 sports car that won the first Can-Am title and, later, the Daytona 24 The T90 Indy car that outdid the Lotus in '66 The T260 Can-Am car that gave McLaren fits in '71 The T330 series of F5000 cars that dominated in the mid-70s and then again in the "new" Can-Am The T600 that won the first IMSA GTP title The T900 that provided Mario Andretti with his last open wheel title The T91/00 and T93/00 that won titles for Newman/Haas with Michael Andretti and Nigel Mansell The B02/00 that won four more titles for Newman/Haas with Da Matta and Bourdais
RIP. Met him and his son in Aspen about 10 years ago, since we shared the same instructor a lot of times, great, wonderful man.
This makes you realise the influence of Carl Haas and Lola in American motorsport history. Both Carl Hass and Lola's passing are a great loss.
I bought my first race car, a Lola T204, from Carl when he had an old garage on the north side of Chicago. I talked with Paul Newman at his place on more than one occasion.
Back in the late 80's or early 90's at Mid-Ohio for Friday Cart, my wife wanted to see Paul Newman. Didn't see him around the Newman-Hass garage. I saw Karl take off on his pit bike to a point way across the field at the top of the property just sitting there. I told my wife "That's Karl up there waiting on PLN coming in by helicopter". So she walked way up there by herself and talk's to Karl for about 15 min. Sure enough here comes PLN. So instead of riding back with Karl, PLN and my wife walked back to the garage together with Karl coasting beside them. I asked what her and Karl talked about all that time. Weather, kids, dogs. Both very common people.
I was part of Newman Haas Racing in 92-93...our guys wrote their data acquisition and analysis software. I spent the entire month of May in the garages at Indy and also attended a handful of other races. I don't really have the right words to describe what it was like to watch Carl go through his pre-race ritual of touching the cars - blessing nearly every part of them. Not to mention those big stogies he chomped on relentlessly. Proud to say that NHR won the Championship that 1st year - IndyCar Rookie, Nigel Mansell. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Ok, I'll take the bait. Here's a great story to illustrate... So we're at NHR offices in suburban Chicago, looking into wiring up their transport trucks with Ethernet (ok, remember, this is 1992) so the engineers have a network in between sessions at the track. My goofball manager decides to pull Nigel's fire suit and helmet out of the locker and dresses up in them. We're busy taking pictures of him. In the middle of this, Nigel's chief mechanic walks into the truck for about 2 seconds - sees what we're doing - and walks right back out without saying a word. We knew we were probably in deep **** so put everything away and got back to business. Next day, a higher up in our firm let us know that our entire partnership was put in jeopardy over this clown show. Nigel is quite superstitious - especially about his helmet. According to folks on the inside, he *knows* when his helmet has been worn by someone else and will no longer wear it. They decided to let it go and not make a big deal out of it. Thank god. So, draw your own conclusions. PS Mario is surprisingly short IRL. PPS This was the first time I ever saw an F40. Haas had one sitting in the middle of his office building. It was a mind-blowing moment.
does anyone know what happened to Carl's F40? I recall an interview a long time ago where he stated he bought it purely for investment and it had almost no miles, stayed in the shop all the time...so potential for a time capsule F40 with great provenance.
That's consistent with what I heard at the time. Might want to ask in the 288/F40/F50/Enzo/LaF forum to see if anyone knows what became of this F40.
Wish all the guys would get together and sit around the campfire and just talk, the stories would be amazing, the books would be volumous. I LOVE that stuff.