Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko believes long-standing Haas team boss Guenther Steiner was “too popular” for his own good, which ultimately led to his demise from the US outfit.
Steiner’s eight-year tenure in F1 with Haas came to an abrupt halt over the Christmas holiday period when eponymous team owner Gene Haas declined to renew the Italian’s management contract, much to the latter’s surprise.
Haas invoked his team’s dramatic lack of results and dismal performance in 2023 as the main justifications for Steiner’s exit and his replacement by the team’s director of engineering Ayao Komatsu.
While there is no denying Haas’ mediocre 2023 campaign and its poor results, Marko suggested that there were other reasons at play that led to Steiner’s departure, reasons linked to the Italian’s impromptu star status acquired over several seasons of the acclaimed Netflix docuseries ‘Drive to Survive’, and upon which Haas may have looked unfavourably, according to Marko.
“Let’s put it this way: anyone who becomes too popular through a documentary like Netflix tends to take off. But if you fly too high too quickly, you will fall more quickly,” Marko explained.
“All I heard was that he wanted to convert his popularity into shares in the team. And owner Gene Haas didn't like that.
“It is also the case in our sport that the team always comes before the individual. Steiner became a victim of his popularity.”
©Haas
Former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone also chimed in on Steiner’s situation, suggesting that the former Haas leader’s popularity with the sport’s fans was out of whack with his merits.
"There has never been a more unsuccessful team boss in Formula 1 who nevertheless became a superstar thanks to a US documentary,” Ecclestone said.
“In my day, when only performance counted, that never happened."
Steiner’s former AlphaTauri counterpart, Franz Tost, who retired from F1 at the end of 2023, believes that his colleague was made an easy target by Haas.
“I got on very well with Guenther, both personally and professionally,” he said. “He was an expert on our sport. That's all I want to say.
“The pressure in Formula 1 is brutal. If a further development of a car doesn't work in the middle of the season, people are looking for someone to blame."
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