Steiner: The conversation with Haas about the dismissal was short

At the beginning of this year, Guenther Steiner was fired as head of Haas. The Italian specialist says that team owner Gene Haas told him about the dismissal during a short telephone conversation.

“Gene called me out of the blue,” Gunther Steiner told British Autocar. “I answered him, “Okay, what do you want to tell me?” He said, “I don’t want to renew your contract.”

I replied: “Ultimately it’s your decision, your team and your contract. What can I do? Do I think the decision was right? No matter what I say, you’re not going to agree with it, so let’s just leave it as it is.”

The conversation with Jin was very short – there was no long discussion or anything like that. Besides, this phone call was very strange. You work with someone for ten years, and then this happens… It’s strange, but I’m doing well and I’m moving on.

In any case, I can no longer believe what is happening in the team.”

In comments to the German publication Auto Motorsport, Steiner explained that the main reason for the disagreement with Gene Haas was due to different views on the team’s development: “I wanted to invest in the team, but he didn’t. We just happened to have different views on how to proceed.

Considering the way everything is organized in the team, it was impossible to count on better results. This is not a criticism, but a statement of facts. Budget constraints completely changed Formula 1 and the old structure no longer worked.

McLaren, Williams and AlphaTauri invested two years in infrastructure to ensure they had more budget for operations. If you don’t follow their example, you can hardly expect to keep up with the times.

It’s no secret that our concept held us back and took too long to respond to changes. This is what happens when a team has half the number of people as everyone else. But our guys did a good job.”