Gene Haas shed light on his team’s split from long-term team principal Guenther Steiner, indicating his frustration at their slump to last in the championship again.
The team fell to 10th place in 2021 after choosing to focus their efforts on preparing a car for new technical regulations which arrived the following year. They duly rose to eighth in the championship in 2022, but fell back to the bottom of the standings last year.
Yesterday Haas announced Guenther Steiner, who has been their team principal since arriving in F1 eight years ago, had been replaced. Haas said the decision “came down to performance.”
“Here we are in our eighth year, over 160 races – we have never had a podium,” he told the official F1 website. “The last couple of years, we’ve been 10th or ninth.”
“I’m not sitting here saying it’s Guenther’s fault, or anything like that, but it just seems like this was an appropriate time to make a change and try a different direction, because it doesn’t seem like continuing with what we had is really going to work,” he added.
“At the end of the day, it’s about performance,” he added. “I have no interest in being 10th anymore.”
The announcement prompted speculation Haas may sell his team to Andretti Global, who were approved for entry into the series by the FIA last year but are yet to agree commercial terms with Formula One Management. However Haas indicated that is not on the cards.
“I didn’t get into F1 to sell,” he said. “I did it because I wanted to race. Guenther had the same perspective. We’re not here to cash out, we want to race and be competitive.”
“We need to do better,” Haas added. “It’s easier to keep sponsors and attract sponsors if we’re a mid-pack team and not a dead last team. That’s my perspective on it. At the same time, if we can run a little faster, we’ll get more FOM money, which will make life a bit easier.
“It’s really all about winning. We have a great team, we have great engines, we have really great drivers. There’s no reason why we are 10th. I can’t understand how we can be with all the equipment and people we have.”
Steiner’s place will be taken by long-serving engineer Ayao Komtasu, while the team will appoint a chief operating officer to handle non-sporting matters.
“I think Guenther had more of a human-type approach to everything with people and the way he interacted with people, he was very good at that,” said Haas. “Ayao is very…
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