Haas to use former Marussia factory

With the American outfit pushing on with its plans to join the F1 grid next year, team chiefs have settled on the Banbury facility after concluding a deal with its former owner Andrei Cheglakov to buy it.

Haas hopes to begin preparing the facility once the assets of the Marussia team - which had been due to be auctioned this week and are still in the factory - are sold.

Although Haas intends much of the work on its new F1 challenger to be done at its high-tech facility in Charlotte, it has always intended to have a European base that can be used for preparing the cars during the campaign.

Speaking to AUTOSPORT last year, team owner Gene Haas said: "There will have to be some kind of European base at least for the cars to go to initially, because we've got to ship them out of either London or Germany.

"We'll probably have to have something where we can at least work on the cars. Primarily everything is going to be made in North Carolina.

"The engines and stuff will go there, and the finished cars will then be shipped to some location [in Europe] for transport to the races, or the European races.

"Then when they're done they'll go back there for refurbishment, or whatever is required."

Haas's takeover of the Banbury facility has prompted speculation that it could even be looking to buy the actual Marussia entry, and start racing with the team's old cars this season.

But AUTOSPORT understands that Haas has no intention of deviating from its original plan of starting racing from 2016, after agreeing a close technical partnership with Ferrari.

The cancellation of the Marussia auction this week is due to talks with a mysterious third party which is looking at buying the assets.

One possibility is that it could be a Ferrari-backed project to create some form of junior team.