Andretti’s Alpine Ferrari-Haas style alliance plans hit a snag

Guenther Steiner has poured cold water over Michael Andretti’s rumoured plans to align his Andretti Global team with Alpine in the same way Haas broke onto the grid with Ferrari.

The rules, says the Haas team boss, just don’t allow for that model any more.

Haas arrived on the Formula 1 grid in 2016, and they did so with the help, as rivals saw it, of Ferrari.

Haas aligned themselves with Ferrari from the get-go, not only buying all the parts possible from the Scuderia but also making use of their wind tunnel.

They were also unrestricted by testing regulations as they prepared for the 2016 season with what rivals felt was a customer Ferrari car.

Team boss Steiner defended Haas’ model.

“Of the teams that came into the sport in the last decade only one is left, so we thought it through and came up with some quite different ideas,” he said in late 2015.

“You cannot do more of the same if the recent past has shown that more of the same doesn’t work.”

Here’s the 2016 @HaasF1Team car for their #F1 debut. Find out more >> https://t.co/e0pDQwDvuP pic.twitter.com/HmByK3LSQc

— Formula 1 (@F1) February 21, 2016

Haas finished eighth in the Constructors’ Championship in their first season in Formula 1, the team scoring an impressive 29 points.

Haas have maintained their close ties to Ferrari, this year’s VF-22 dubbed ‘Moby Dick’ with pundits calling it a white Ferrari.

With the alliance still going strong, it is being said that Andretti, who has applied to be the 11th team on the Formula 1 grid, wants a similar relationship with Alpine.

While Andretti has already revealed that Renault is his preferred choice to power his Formula 1 cars, Auto Motor und Sport claims he wants a Haas-Ferrari style partnership with Alpine.

‘Michael Andretti makes no secret of who he wants to make a pact with,’ reports Michael Schmidt. ‘The 59-year-old American sat with his financiers and partners every day in the Alpine pavilion and conferred for hours with…