Ex-Formula 1 Team Principal Guenther Steiner has conceded that his departure from Haas at the end of last season should have materialised sooner in hindsight.
Haas announced at the turn of this year that Steiner, who had been with the squad since its inception, had not received an extension to his contract as team boss.
Gene Haas explained how prioritising engineering at the heart of the Haas setup was behind promoting Ayao Komatsu to the helm in place of the ousted Steiner.
It was reported that Steiner and Gene Haas had disagreed on the future vision for the American outfit, with the latter against increasing his personal investment.
Although Steiner admitted it had emerged as a “surprise”, he has since conceded that in retrospect he has been able to accept that the timing was right to move on.
“Life has been good since I left Haas ahead of this season,” Steiner wrote in his new column on the F1 website.
“These last few weeks are the first time I’ve switched off from F1 for around a decade. This time has been good for me.
“The longer time goes on, the more I can see that I stayed at Haas too long.
“When you step away, you get clarity – and you can see what you need to do. While you’re there, you’re in denial, you think you can do it but you cannot.”
Haas had peaked with a fifth-place finish in the Constructors’ Championship in 2018, but it had regressed since that milestone and slumped to the bottom last season.
Steiner has hinted that the realisation that Haas under its current model would have a limited ceiling had made him become disillusioned with its long-term prospects.
“With what we had, you could still fight for being seventh, eighth or ninth – but you couldn’t fight for podiums without the same weapons as the other guys,” he added.
“Doing that in the long-term is not what I want to do in life. I don’t want to be seventh again. I’ve done that. I want to be able to fight, to battle at the front.
“It’s the same thing with Red Bull. How long did it take for them to get there? Every year, they kept on getting better. You need that patience and long-term planning.”
Alongside his written pieces on the F1 website, Steiner was in the paddock in Bahrain as he made the first of eight television appearances for German station RTL.
Amid the high turnover of F1 team bosses in recent times, Steiner has teased that he would be prepared to return to a management role under the right conditions.
“I would come back to F1 in the future, but it needs to be the right project, done right,” he concluded.
Haas bagged the first point under the stewardship of Komatsu in Saudi Arabia as Kevin Magnussen’s slow tactics enabled Nico Hulkenberg to secure a vital 10th place.
Discussion about this post