Why Steiner’s departure is a big loss for Haas F1

In two years, all teams but Mercedes and Red Bull have changed their team principals. Steiner has joined Mattia Binotto, Jost Capito and Otmar Szafnauer (twice) on the list of those who were ousted in somewhat acrimonious circumstances, with director of engineering Ayao Komatsu taking over at Haas.

This unprecedented level of churn has made the sport look a little like football, where managers pay the price for a team’s lack of form. In F1, there are many factors at play, and lead times are long as teams try to climb the grid. Nevertheless, team principals and technical directors are often held responsible for below-par performance.

The difference in Steiner’s case is that, in many people’s eyes, he was the Haas team. He built the outfit piece by piece from the germ of an idea, and its public perception was dominated by his larger-than-life personality.

Why Steiner embodied Haas

Steiner had worked at Jaguar and Red Bull before heading to the USA to start a composite business in North Carolina, the home of NASCAR. He watched with some interest as the doomed US F1 team crashed and burned at a facility just a few miles away, but that didn’t deter him from putting together his own project.

Steiner came up with the idea of hooking up with Ferrari and taking everything allowed by the rules in terms of mechanical parts, thus reducing the need for in-house design and manufacturing resources, and making the project realistic.

The next step was to find someone to pay for it, and Haas – already successful in NASCAR and keen to grow his machine tool business worldwide – was the perfect candidate.

“Originally when we started off Guenther was proposing customer cars, back in 2009-10,” Haas said as the project was coming together in 2015. “That never really worked out, but as time evolved, it was: ‘Here’s a different way of doing it, would you want to try it this way?’”

Stainer’s achievement in putting the team together with a sound, long-term business plan should not be underestimated. He single-handedly made all the deals and went through a similar entry process with the FIA and F1 to what Michael Andretti has been so frustrated by.

He also had to put together the personnel, initially calling on former Jaguar technical colleagues and hiring folk left stranded by the collapse of the Manor team, whose factory…