‘Some days I think ‘why the hell do I do this?’: Steiner on Haas’ future – and Andretti

A couple of months ago, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner lamented the demise of what termed the ‘dinosaur’ archetype of Formula 1 team principal.

Classing himself and fierce foil Toto Wolff among a list including the likes of Ron Dennis, Eddie Jordan and Frank Williams, Horner decried how modern team leaders have become “much more technical than the entrepreneurial side”. In his view, there were more “big characters and personalities” in his early years heading Red Bull.

While Horner might have a point, it seems he forgot one of his former employees, and perhaps the biggest “character and personality” of any of his peers on the pit wall. A man whose outraged outbursts and sometimes vulgar vocabulary have earned him cult status among fans and the wider public through a certain Netflix documentary series. The hard-nosed Haas team principal, Guenther Steiner.

He is a busy man. As well as running the smallest team on the F1 grid and his own composites design and manufacturing business in the United States, the 58-year old has even become a published author this year with the release of ‘Surviving to Drive’ – his personal account of Haas F1’s tumultuous 2022 season. Today, Steiner has offered RaceFans a slot in his Thursday schedule ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix to have a frank on-record conversation. So as RaceFans asks Steiner how draining it really is to be him, he’s typically honest in his reply.

“It is quite tiring,” he confesses amid the hustle and bustle around us in the paddock at the Losail International Circuit. “But in the end, if you choose to do something, you get that additional energy to do it.

“There are some days when you really think ‘why the hell do I do all this?’. Honestly, you just think about it. But then again, I think it’s a privilege in life to do things you really like to do. I don’t hate any of the things I do. Obviously, I have to do jobs which I hate on a daily basis maybe, but it’s for 50 minutes, 20 minutes – like speaking with some journalist with red hair, that’s one of them…”

Steiner’s telling grin betrays his sarcastic nature. But he can afford to be cheeky as he remains at the helm of the team he was asked to lead by team owner Gene Haas. Eight seasons into their existence, Haas may not be giants in their sport, but they are fit, healthy and able to fight. That’s far better than so many teams who have attempted to join Formula 1 over the last 30 years as entirely new entries can say.

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But although Haas has proven its viability to compete, it’s struggling to achieve the escape velocity required to move from the back of the grid into the midfield and beyond. Just days after this interview, the team lost eighth place in the constructors’ championship to Alfa Romeo.

Having already announced that the team will be retaining drivers Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg for 2024, after bringing the latter into their team to replace Mick Schumacher, Steiner is clearly betting on consistency and experience over unproven talent. But even though his team has appeared to be spinning its wheels at times in the quest for progress up the order, Steiner insists that better days lie ahead for Haas.

“I think we’ve made steps,” he says. “In Formula 1, to make steps like this, you cannot make them from today to tomorrow. You always need to keep on doing planning for the future.

“But when we made the decision last year that we wanted to go back to have experienced drivers, that was the reason why. We just want to be solid, knowing what is right, what is wrong. Just again strengthen the foundation of the team. It’s nice to see that it seems to be working. Obviously we are not, performance-wise with the car, where we want to be, but at least we know where we need to work at. It’s not the drivers. The car is just using the tyres too much in the race.”

For their second home grand prix of the season in Austin this weekend Haas will finally introduce a much-anticipated upgrades package to boost their efforts over the final five rounds of the season. This was something the team did not do in 2022 – a year where Schumacher’s frequent errors proved costly in the championship as well as for their budget. But in a budget cap era, would Haas have been able to introduce a late round of upgrades last year with all the money spent on repairs and replacement parts?

“I would say no, it wouldn’t have been possible,” he says. “Because I know the budget cap where we at last year, we couldn’t have afforded or we wouldn’t have stayed in the budget cap if we would have done an upgrade like this last year. We would’ve been outside of the budget cap.”

Now that this year, his team has been able to introduce a final upgrade package at the end of the season, does that validate his decision to bring in Hulkenberg and go for experience over youth on the driver front?

“We can bring this upgrade this year because we didn’t do any in the beginning of the year because we couldn’t find any performance,” he explains.

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“People said ‘you don’t bring any upgrades’… even if you spend money, the car doesn’t go any faster! So why would I spend money? Therefore we made a change in the concept. We said instead of waiting for next year, we tried to do something this year to go already in the direction we want to go for next year.”

A few days earlier, the FIA finally confirmed the series’ worst-kept secret, that it would be advancing Andretti-Cadillac’s bid to join the world championship as its 11th team to Formula 1 Management for consideration. While the news was welcomed by many fans, Steiner has been nothing if not consistent in his opposition to another team being granted a place on the grid.

Having been with Haas since long before the team had produced its first ever car, Steiner feels he has particular authority from which to discuss the difficulties of setting up an entirely new Formula 1 team.

“It’s not easy, to say the least,” he says. “It’s a big challenge.

“Obviously when you want to do it, you’re convinced you can do it. But I think the best example is USF1 – they didn’t make it. Other people made it, but then they weren’t here for long because you need to also have the capability to stay here. It’s not only getting here – getting is almost as difficult as staying here. So I think it’s not easy.

“What I would like to say is that I don’t think it has gotten any easier than when we did it. It actually got a lot more difficult in my opinion. It’s just the intensity of the sport has grown in the last eight years massively. So I think it isn’t easy to do this and it shouldn’t be underestimated.”

Like Haas themselves, whose operation is split between Kannapolis, North Carolina, Banbury in the UK and Maranello at Ferrari’s Italian headquarters, Andretti have proposed a multi-site approach to running their potential team.

“You can do a lot these days, being in different locations,” Steiner says. “Because we are in different locations – we’re in Italy, we are in England and we are in the US – but our base, our race team, is based in England for that reason.

“I don’t really know how Andretti would split it up because I haven’t seen any of their plans, obviously. I think only the FIA has seen them because there was nowhere written how exactly they going to do it. It’s all like ‘we’re going to do it a little bit here, a little bit there,’ but I don’t know. You can do some of the stuff in America – as we do – but the race operation we decided to have in the UK.”

Despite the boom in F1’s popularity in the United States and the regulations revolution that has supposedly levelled the playing field both on the track and in the financial departments, Steiner argues that it would be even harder for a new team to enter the sport given how strong the current 10 competitors are.

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“It’s not that easy. Formula 1 has got very difficult and it’s getting more and more difficult,” he explains. “Actually it’s one of the things, you think ‘will there ever be an 11th F1 team?,’ just of being possible to do it. Because you haven’t got five years to build up to it, because you need to be very wealthy to do that one.”

He points to the example of Porsche’s flirtation with Red Bull, which ended with the Volkswagen Group-owned brand canning its plans to enter F1.

“A big corporate like Volkswagen, they opted to buy a team and when they couldn’t buy a team with one of their other brands, Porsche, they opted not to do it. So I actually think there is an awareness of how difficult this has become now. And going forward, it could be a concern as well.

“But maybe not, because there are 10 solid teams and if somebody’s really interested he just has to wait until something is for sale like everything else. At some stage everything comes and goes. But starting from zero will be very difficult.”

Although Haas are their own manufacturer, their close relationship with power unit suppliers Ferrari is well documented. Haas has generally run almost as many Ferrari-designed parts as the regulations permit. But this brings challenges, as Haas largely has to follow Ferrari’s aerodynamic concept as a result – for better or for worse. Looking into the future, can Steiner foresee his team ever cutting the cord and going entirely their own way?

“I think that’s a little bit too early to say,” he admits. “We need to first get more solid before we do the next step. That’s our plan for the short-term, the next two years, just to get these things right, like this year. If we didn’t find improvement in the car, we should have changed direction earlier.

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“We still need to learn a little bit. Once we get everything solid, under control, then we can think about it. But at the moment we don’t even think about it. We can make improvements with other things we do for the team then changing now or going on our own. Because, again, there are risks involved with it.”

Although Haas’s final position in the standings for 2023 will be decided over the five remaining rounds to come, it’s naturally never too early to look beyond. But with the Austin upgrades set to arrive and stability in the driver line-up, Steiner thinks 2024 could potentially be a pivotal season for the team.

“Yeah, it could be,” he says. “But it’s always the same. You do a new car, you really never know what you’ve got until you go out there and test, because you don’t know what the other ones are doing. Maybe we think we are great, but what if the other ones are great or if we’re still behind them. So it’s one of those things you just find out when you really get there in February.”

Steiner may not have the same natural eloquence in English to express himself as someone like Williams team principal and renowned orator James Vowles, but he more than makes up for it through his frank and honest answers to any question thrown at him.

“That’s who I am,” Steiner insists. “I don’t have to create it.

“If you ask people who know me a long time, I haven’t changed. I never do this just to brush it away. No need for that.”

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In an age when all team principals have to be so mindful of every word that comes out of their mouths both on social media and in the meeting rooms, Steiner’s experience has earned him the freedom to speak a little more openly than if he was one of these new, modern ‘professionals’ figures who Christian Horner was referring to.

But although he could easily pack it all in to pursue sometime different, Steiner seems under no intention of handing Haas over to anyone else any time soon.

“In life I think I’m fortunate because I can do what I want to do,” Steiner says.

“Is it hard, yeah. Could I have an easier life? Yes. But would I be bored pretty quick? Yes. So do this and just live sometimes with it. If I would take it a little bit slower, it would be better because it’s also the excitement, what you get with it. Every day, something new, different and good. I still enjoy it. The day I don’t enjoy it anymore, I know when to leave.”

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