Steiner Dismisses Speculations Of Divided Attention Leading To Haas Departure

Wednesday, 24 January 2024 at 11:06

Updated at Wednesday, 24 January 2024 at 11:07

Former team principal Guenther Steiner dismissed the notion that his divided attention could harm his performance in the primary role and lead to Haas's departure.

Guenther Steiner has been with the Haas team for eight years, ever since the team was established, and was considered an essential part of the American team.

So when his replacement and recent departure from the team were announced, people started searching for possible causes of his exit.

F1 World Champion Damon Hill suggested the team principal has been included in too many things outside of F1, like writing his own books and new TV series.

That might upset some people because the primary job of the team principal is to look after his team (which finished last during the most recent season). Guenther Steiner responded to this notion as he told motorsport.com:

"I think people are overrating that, how much distraction that is. Because it isn't actually a lot of distraction from the daily job."

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Many team principals have no other publicly visible hobbies, as they seem to be 100% devoted to F1 and their team. But Steiner suggested many team principals of bigger teams actually have more work than he did.

"Obviously, on the race weekends, you need to work more. But for example, I didn't have 20 [sponsor] appearances a weekend, I had maybe three maximum."

Moreover, the 58-year-old explained that he is not the one who writes the book, as is the case with many popular people nowadays.

"It's not like that is distracting, even writing the book. Obviously, a ghostwriter does it for you. Now I've got more time, but even now, we do two sessions a week of half an hour. We do one on Tuesday and one on Friday. That's all I do; he does the rest."

The way celebrities write their books nowadays is they have a talk or an interview with the ghostwriter who gathers information capturing their voice and perspective.

Then, through multiple meetings and discussions, the ghostwriter collects stories for the content and writes the book that reflects the thoughts and experiences of the famous person.

"You speak with him, but it's not like I spent days speaking with him. I know that some people have spent days speaking with these people, but I didn't."

Steiner went as far as to say that his growing fame brought new sponsors to Haas, who would not have been interested in the team if it weren't for him. He added:

"I don't think that is a big factor. I think that there were more benefits for the team than anything else about this because they got a lot of sponsors."