Steiner: Formula 1 can emerge 'better' from current crisis

Haas team boss Guenther Steiner believes a new and improved Formula 1 can emerge from the current crisis sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, if solidarity prevails among the teams.

Formula 1's forced hiatus will prove the ultimate test for commercial rights holder Liberty Media in terms of its ability to pull its main constituents together to weather the sport's thundering storm.

As teams face a massive revenue shortfall, the future of F1's smaller outfits is in jeopardy, but where everyone sees a problem, Steiner see an opportunity for the sport.

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"The question of existence arises," the Haas boss told Auto Motor und Sport. "But I think that problems always have to be dealt with positively.

"On the other hand, a problem also creates new opportunities. If we all work together, pull all ten teams together, we may get out of this situation even better. For the sport and for all of our employees."

But how exactly does Steiner see F1 emerging better from the current turmoil?

The Italian's answer to the question is logically about money and next year's $175 million budget cap, the threshold of which must be lowered insists Steiner.

"Exactly. Find where you can save money," he said.

"We have a situation that we cannot change, we therefore have to deal with it realistically. We get less money, but we all want to stay in business.

"We have to agree on cuts that would make the sport more interesting in the future and that would bring the field closer together.

"We shouldn't see the negative, we should see the positive. The priority goal, I think, is to make sure that all ten teams are on the gird in Melbourne next year."

As races continued to be cancelled and no clear end of the crisis in sight, Steiner says the collateral damage on the teams is hard to assess.

"You can't evaluate the damage yet because you don't know exactly what we'll be doing later in the year.

"We don't know when we'll have a safe start, at I don't know. We don't have the situation under control because it doesn't depend on us. But I think the sponsors understand if a few races are canceled."

When F1 is up and running once again, re-instating several races could entail a change of the traditional race weekend format.

"We are working on turning certain races into two-day events instead of three," Steiner said.

"It's all a work in progress. There are so many open questions. A lot of advice is given in the background about what is possible and what is not.

"There will certainly be a couple of formats that are new because we are being forced to do so. This in turn gives us the opportunity to see if they are better or worse.

"If something doesn't work, we at least know that we won't be doing it in the future. There are opportunities that we may get that would not otherwise exist because we wouldn't agree on them.

"Now we have to do certain things to survive."

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