Steiner: 'Spec cars would be the end of F1'

Haas F1 Team boss Guenther Steiner was warned Formula 1's bosses against going down the road of 'spec cars'.

That's the approach of making all cars run to essentially the same specification of chassis and engine design. In the US, IndyCar has moved in this direction with its decision to mandate a common bodywork aerokit.

While that's been praised for boosting exciting on-track action, Steiner is against it in Formula 1.

"I think F1 should not go spec cars," he told Motorsport.com this week. “If F1 goes [towards] spec cars I think it is the end of F1.

"It’s the pinnacle of motorsport. Technology is still important," he explained.

"As much as we don’t think people are interested, a lot of people are interested in technology, not only in racing. And I think F1 is a good showcase for technology.

"We should not dumb F1 down like IndyCar, because then you have got GP1 and we know where that one is going."

Haas admits that criticism from rivals 'hurts'

Steiner's negative comments about IndyCar earned him a swift rebuke on social media from former series champion Dario Franchitti.

"Yeah, who wants to watch a series with overtaking and drivers making a difference?" Franchitti said on Twitter. "There’s a big difference between some spec parts and 'dumbing down'.

"Anyway, isn’t the Haas car built and developed by others?" added the three-time Indy 500 winner. "Seems Steiner's only qualification is making misinformed comments."

Steiner did say that he was all in favour of dialogue with other motor racing series to share good practice.

“I think speaking with people is always good because you always learn," he said. "If you don’t speak, you never learn anything."

Steiner said that he had confidence in the sport's new owners, who seemed to be making the right calls for the future with Ross Brawn as director of motorsport.

"I think F1 has got a good structure in place with Ross on top of it to know what Formula 1 is and where to go," said Steiner.

“The people in F1 are pretty clever, and we know where we need to go.

"It’s how we get there, that is the bigger problem for us than what we need to do."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.