With Mick Schumacher on a final warning with his team boss, Ralf Schumacher has slated Guenther Steiner’s draconian management style.
Steiner has been Mick’s boss ever since he joined the Formula 1 grid in 2021.
But while last season the German was the golden boy, comfortably quicker than his team-mate Nikita Mazepin, this season he has been out-paced and out-shone by the returning Kevin Magnussen.
To make matters worse, he has yet to score a point while his Jeddah and Monaco crashes have left Haas with a $2 million dollar repair bill.
It is safe to say that Steiner is not impressed and, in the build up to the Baku Grand Prix weekend, issued his driver a final warning.
“It’s just not possible to continue like this,” Steiner said as per Motorsport.com, “and he knows that.”
He added: “I think there’s a lot of things going on, but there is not one simple answer. We need to see how we go forward. There’s a lot of things we have to sort out now.”
But while the team boss says he has not been lecturing the 23-year-old as that would be counter productive, his uncle still feels the Italian’s “extremely authoritarian” management style isn’t helping the situation.
The former driver turned pundit told F1-Insider.com: “Steiner’s style makes it difficult for the drivers.
“He has an extremely authoritarian leadership style that I remember from my active Formula 1 days. But today it is no longer up-to-date.”
He added: “Both made mistakes, both Mick and the team. Except that the mistakes were not publicly mentioned by the team.”
Schumacher says he knows what it is like to drive for a testing boss.
Racing for Williams under Sir Frank Williams from 1999 to 2004, the German reckons one thing Steiner and Williams had in common is that they’d speak to the media in order to put “pressure” on their drivers.
“Frank wanted to stir up conflicts instead of spreading team spirit and harmony,” he said. “He believed that drivers perform…
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