Guenther Steiner’s sacking from Haas has been one of the most surprising moves in Formula 1 in a long time. The team owner Gene Haas sacked Steiner after the American team finished the 2023 F1 season P10 in the Constructors’ championship. Following Steiner’s sacking, Haas placed Ayao Komatsu in place of Steiner for improvement in their performances. However, there’s already a warning looming over the team and its new team principal.
Gary Anderson, a renowned F1 figure spoke about this in the recent podcast by The Race. There he said, “As I mentioned, they are not well-resourced, and the problem is they could end up trapped in a bit of a vicious cycle.” Notably, this is simply because the improvement at Haas is not visible at the moment.
While every single team on the grid is making progress be it the likes of Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari, or Stake, AlphaTauri, the scene is almost the same. This isn’t the case for Gene Haas’ team as there is not much to talk about their progress for the upcoming season.
Furthermore, there is an enormous lack of funding for the American team, something even Anderson focused on in the podcast. Therefore, Gene Haas’ demand to improve from their 2023 standings might not end up being fruitful next year due to this reason.
Hence, the Haas F1 team is expected to be in a vicious cycle even after sacking Guenther Steiner and placing Ayao Komatsu in the top boss role. Nevertheless, Steiner‘s dismissal from the team did not go down well with many.
Guenther Steiner’s sacking brought numerous criticism from leading F1 figures
As much as Guenther Steiner’s sacking was unexpected, the criticism on the team for his departure was inevitable. Steiner was such a figure in F1, that his untimely and sudden dismissal from the team pulled in comments from the likes of Craig Slater, Helmut Marko, Damon Hill, and so on.
On this, Slater said, “It’s a big call. And if they’re not going to provide extra finance to rebuild the factory and all that, how is Ayao Komatsu (Steiner’s successor) going to do any better?” Whereas Marko had something to say about Steiner’s popularity.
The Red Bull top boss stated that the former Haas driver’s popularity was one of the primary reasons for his dismissal. Hill revealed that the sacking did not make any sense as the former boss was the man who got everything together for the team.
As for Steiner, he too didn’t see the dismissal coming. He knew that there was a renewal coming up but did not know when. In return, he had to endure the sacking instead of getting his contract renewed.
Nevertheless, Steiner’s sudden dismissal given he was the most famous persona in his team who went head-to-head with the likes of Christian Horner and Toto Wolff was undoubtedly very harsh. As things stand, his future endeavor is still unknown and it will be interesting to see where he lands up next.
