Guenther Steiner ‘stayed two years too long’ in fresh Gene Haas criticism
Guenther Steiner was dropped by Haas after the 2023 season
Former Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner says he doesn’t understand why his ex-boss Gene Haas is even in Formula 1 as the American has “maybe lost interest in the sport.”
Haas entered Formula 1 in 2016 with Steiner in charge of the American team, leading Haas to a fifth-place finish in the Constructors’ Championship in only its third season on the grid.
Guenther Steiner reveals why he disagreed with Gene Haas’ F1 vision
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That’s a feat that the team has been unable to match in the eight years since, with Haas twice finishing at the very bottom of the standings.
Steiner, who had been integral in Haas’ entry into Formula 1, was dropped from his role as team principal ahead of the 2024 season, replaced by Ayao Komatsu.
Under Komatsu’s leadership, Haas sits seventh in this year’s Constructors’ Championship where it trails Racing Bulls and Alpine by 40 points in a notable split between Formula 1’s midfield and the backmarkers.
Steiner suggests Haas has lost its way under Gene Haas’ ownership.
“With Gene Haas, you’d need to have him here on your podcast to ask him what he wanted to do [with the team] because I still haven’t understood,” Steiner told the High Performance Podcast.
“Being in a sport, for me being somewhere competitive, I want to be a winner. That is what I aim for.
“Only one can achieve it, I’m fully aware of that, but you make the maximum effort, not just [aim] to be a participant.
“It’s the same in life. You don’t just want to be a participant, you want to be a part of life, you want to enjoy yourself.
“In the beginning there was a clear plan. It’s difficult to get into F1, as we now can see with Cadillac it’s not easy. We had success pretty early, we then had a few bad years as well, 2019, but that’s normal in a sport, you cannot have always good years.
“You are competing with the best of the best and at some stage maybe he lost interest in the sport, maybe he thought it should be done different, and the relationship just deteriorated over time.”
That deterioration ultimately led to Haas not renewing Steiner’s contract for the 2024 season.
The Italian, though, reckons he should probably have left a few years earlier.
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Reflecting on his years with the team, Steiner candidly remarked that he should have quit as early as 2021.
“I think I stayed two years too long,” he revealed.
“What I should have done better or differently was to explain my vision better so they would do it, but I don’t know if I would ever have achieved that.
“What I should have done was just say, ‘Hey, it’s not working. I’m leaving now.’
“But in the end, I don’t regret not leaving two years before. I’m pretty fine with it. With hindsight, that’s what I say, but at the time it wasn’t this bad because otherwise I would have done it.
“[The decision] was taken away, but I was pretty happy that it was taken away.
“Sometimes you want to make a decision, but then you don’t. When it came to it, I was very happy when it happened because I didn’t agree with where the team was going. My vision was different than the owner’s.”
Steiner has swapped four wheels for two since leaving Formula 1, the Italian part of a consortium that acquired the Red Bull KTM Tech3 MotoGP motorcycle racing team.
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