Haas rules out 2015 F1 entry

(Reuters) - NASCAR team owner Gene Haas has ruled out entering Formula One next year but says he remains committed to being on the grid in 2016. The American's proposed new U.S.-based team was accepted by the governing International Automobile Federation (FIA) in April but no date was set for its debut. Although Haas had said at the time that he was hoping to make his debut as soon as possible, he told Forbes magazine that it would have to be 2016. "The plan is absolutely to launch in 2016 and we are fully committed to that," he said ahead of this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. "I think we will be a better team because we will have more time to plan and we will be able to do a lot more engineering in Kannapolis (North Carolina)." The California-based multi-millionaire said the plan was for the team to have aerodynamics operations in North Carolina with a European base in England and close to Formula One rivals. The last U.S.-based team to compete in Formula One was Haas Lola in 1986. Its co-founder Carl Haas was not related to Gene Haas, whose Stewart-Haas Racing team won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship in 2011. (Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Justin Palmer)