Guenther Steiner Replies To Likely Reason For His Exit

Sunday, 14 January 2024 at 21:00

Guenther Steiner responded to the question about one of the likely reasons for his departure from Haas in a recent interview.

Guenther Steiner leaving the Haas has been a great shock for everybody. The team principal became the face of the American team over the course of eight seasons.

Steiner became a bit of a celebrity over the course of the last few seasons thanks to the Netflix series "Drive to Survive." He wrote his own book and was even supposed to have his own TV series soon.

Asked if his new "celebrity status" might have been an issue to the team owner or other employees of the Haas F1 team, Steiner told Sky Sports: "Not really, but thinking back now, it could have."

"But in the end that celebrity gave the team a lot of exposure, brought in very good sponsors like MoneyGram because they liked that because they could use that [profile]."

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Being the last team on the grid, Haas struggled with finances, has not really been able to fill the budget cap and had a very challenging time searching for big sponsors.

"There are always positives and negatives to any deal so maybe there were some positives and somebody brought up the negatives."

The team owner of the Haas F1 team, Gene Haas, suggested the reason for the departure of the team principal with immediate effect rather than the insufficient results.

It is true that the American team could not achieve the top five ever since 2018, but Steiner has become an essential part of the team. The former team principal continued:

"These are things you cannot always plan for because I was not out there trying to look for celebrity. It happened to me, and only the people who know me know that, so I'm ok with that."

The Italian team principal also played a crucial role in assembling the team. In fact, he has been the mastermind behind putting everything together before joining F1.

The team owner, Gene Haas, was the one who put down the money, but Steiner was the one who convinced him and also recruited the core team at the beginning. The former team principal added Haas might not have been in F1 anymore without him.

"I didn't get up in the morning to be a celebrity. I get up in the morning to work. But I think it worked a lot in favour of the team because without that maybe it would have been closed before.