Last Friday, the American Haas team presented its car for the 2022 Formula 1 season based on a 3D model . There were no big surprises in terms of the decoration of the car, which already in 2021 used those of its main sponsor, the Uralkali company, as colors, which in turn are those of the Russian flag.
The Russian connection with an American team may not be the most appropriate in these days when the two great powers are facing each other on the world political stage with the Ukraine conflict. And Russia already knows that it faces “hard sanctions” if it intervenes on Ukrainian territory.
Recently the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen , spoke of “a robust and comprehensive package of financial and economic sanctions” on Russia if the Ukraine conflict escalated.
In the United States , the Senate of the North American country has worked to create a set of sanctions if necessary and that has the support of Democrats and Republicans.
Diplomatic measures could include excluding Russia from the SWIFT payment system , which is used for international transfers.
(Click on the image or on this link to see all the photos of the new Haas VF-22)
Such a radical sanction seems unlikely to be implemented for the time being, but if it is, it would mean that payment flows out of Russia would be significantly more difficult, which is not good for a US company that wants to receive financial support from a company Russian chemistry as is the case with Haas.
But the director of the Haas team, Günther Steiner (Italian), assured that he is currently not worried about the global political conflict in Eastern Europe. “We don’t get involved in politics because the issue is too far away for us anyway,” the manager said. “But of course I follow what’s going on in the world. Things like that happen everywhere.”
“If something comes up that affects us, we’ll deal with it. But at the moment it’s not a problem for us because we don’t have a say in what happens anyway, and I’m glad of that! We’re here to play sports. Yes There is some sanction that affects us, we will see. But at the moment we cannot influence that.”
