On an April evening last year, Guenther Steiner approached Waterstones Piccadilly confused and with little in the way of moral support. Steiner was holding a signing session following the release of his first book, and his wife Gertie could muster only one possible explanation for the huge crowds gathered outside.
“They must be waiting for a pop star or something,” she said. That something was her husband, a cult figure in Formula One as a result of his searingly honest and expletive-filled appearances on Netflix’s Drive to Survive. His departure from Haas last year, having been team principal since 2014, has not dimmed his popularity.
We will discuss that acrimonious split, and his assessment of the sport’s wider landscape, but first a return to Waterstones, this time for Steiner’s latest book, Unfiltered.
“I make people happy, you see?” he says, before swiftly confessing his commitment to that role is occasionally tested. “A dedication to somebody is fine, I do it. But sometimes they walk in and it’s like, ‘Happy birthday, and I hope you have a lot of children one day, and your children marry good people’. It’s hard work!”
Steiner is staging a speaking tour across the UK, which included a sold-out show at the London Palladium. The 59-year-old had to be told the venue was a “pretty big deal”, and fame will not be going to his head any time soon. “In my house, I cannot get my head up,” Steiner laughs. “It’s not taken down, it’s smashed down. Between my daughter and my wife, and then I’ve got two dogs which are on their side. That doesn’t help.”
A tale of 10 motorhomes
A return to the literary world was sparked by Steiner’s dismissal last December, when a decade-long journey ended with a six-minute phone call as he examined a piece of ham at a deli counter in northern Italy.
Gene Haas, the owner of the team Steiner effectively built from scratch, had rung just after Christmas to say he was not renewing his team principal’s contract. “OK, Gene, that’s fine with me,” Steiner replied, hanging up to end what remains the pair’s last conversation.
There was time on that call for a final disagreement on a theme that defined Steiner’s last years in charge. He believed the team needed more investment to improve; Haas insisted existing resources were sufficient for better results. Fatigued by that battle, Steiner did not fight Haas’s decision, even if the manner in which it was delivered still grates.
“I’m disappointed but not surprised,” Steiner says. “If you work with somebody for 10 years, you know the person. This is typical him, he doesn’t know any better. The biggest disappointment was not to have a proper goodbye with the team. Doing it like this was cheap, but I had no choice. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t get it. When it goes wrong, it’s somebody else’s fault.”
Steiner wishes he had walked away two years ago. “[Haas] started to get more involved: ‘Oh this is not good enough’,” Steiner explains. “Well, we need more [investment] to be better in the future. He says, ‘no, this and not more, but we still need to get better’. Wait a moment, I cannot do that. I cannot walk on water. Halfway through 2022 at the latest, I should have said enough is enough.”
The biggest disappointment was not saying goodbye to the team. Doing it like this was cheap
Instead, Steiner stayed, still “convinced I could find solutions”. He had lined up a new £6 million motorhome for the team, one he hoped would help secure lucrative sponsors, but Haas pulled the plug. Steiner was told the motorhome would not make the car faster. “If you go into the F1 paddock and you see nine nice motorhomes and one dwarf motorhome, where are sponsors attracted to go?” Steiner asks. “I didn’t want the biggest one, I just wanted an adequate one. You try to attract a sponsor, but you go into this little thing and they’re looking out the window: triple the size, double the size, triple the size, four times the size. ‘Why would I come here?’.”
‘McLaren were scared’
Steiner, as he puts it, is now a “free man”. The pitwall has been replaced by school runs and jet-ski rides on the lake by his North Carolina home. Still, there is not as much free time as initially expected. Steiner planned to attend only the Austrian Grand Prix to catch up with friends, but his punditry work has taken him to half the races. Steiner has therefore had a regular front-row seat to a season that began with expectations of another Red Bull procession but is now set for a grandstand finish. Leaving Silverstone in July, Max Verstappen held an 84-point lead over Lando Norris. With six races to go, starting in Austin this weekend, Norris has cut that to 52.
McLaren top the constructors’ standings and have the fastest car on the grid. Can Norris hold his nerve, knowing he must be near-perfect until the chequered flag in Abu Dhabi? “I give it 60-40 to Lando,” Steiner says. “He needs a little bit of help from Ferrari, to take points away from Max. I don’t think he has really at the moment understood what is possible. He hasn’t got that nastiness in him yet, like a Max Verstappen has. Once he gets used to winning, he will grow that.”
There was no nastiness in Hungary, when Norris complied with McLaren orders to let team-mate Oscar Piastri through for victory. McLaren have since confirmed they will favour Norris, but Steiner insists the team were too late to comprehend the strength of their title challenge.
“They were scared of themselves, they were not expecting that they were this good,” Steiner says. “I spoke with Zak [Brown, McLaren team principal] about this one. He was saying, ‘We are humble’. Yeah, but you have the best car. Take the responsibility, go and win the championship.”
Wolff in position to pounce
Red Bull’s struggles in the other corner of this particular fight have been dramatic, winning seven of the season’s first 10 races but none of the last eight.
“I’m surprised with how it’s played out,” Steiner says. “Red Bull haven’t developed backwards, but once they got under pressure they made wrong moves. They had been in this comfort zone. When you’re winning in F1, whatever you do you will be the brightest guy in the world. Then you lose, you will be the biggest idiot ever.”
With the team’s dominance weakening, Verstappen’s future has been a source of speculation. His contract at Red Bull runs until 2028, but Verstappen’s father held talks with Mercedes boss Toto Wolff in the summer over a potential move.
“There’s a good chance that he goes to Mercedes in 2026,” Steiner predicts, in time for the sport’s regulation changes. “They are always good when a new regulation comes out. Red Bull is not Red Bull from six months ago. There’s a good relationship with Toto too. I think that will happen.”
Unfinished business
Verstappen has history with Mercedes, having controversially denied Lewis Hamilton the 2021 title. Michael Masi was removed as F1 race director for his part in that final-lap saga and Steiner maintains Hamilton should be an eight-time world champion, denied only by a “s***show of biblical proportions”.
“Michael Masi is a good friend of mine,” he says. “As a race director he was very good, but Michael Masi f***** it up. We all have these moments.”
And what if Steiner had been in Wolff’s Mercedes shoes at the time? He leans forward. “I would have killed Michael Masi,” he jokes. “Oh yes, there would be a few f-words in there. Not, ‘Hey Michael, this is so not right’.”
A career in diplomacy is unlikely, but Steiner does not rule out another team principal stint. He is not actively looking, though, nor does he have any desire to fight the same battles that he has left behind.
“There needs to be something bigger in the future than a point,” Steiner says. “There needs to be a podium or something. You work day and night to finish sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth in the championship. Once you have done that, do I really want to do it for the rest of my life? No.”
