Yahoo Autos Why Guenther Steiner is Still the Right Leader for Haas F1 Team
With three races remaining in the 2020 season, Haas F1 is ninth in the Formula 1 Constructors' Standings with just three points.
Haas F1 Team principal Guenther Steiner has been calling the shots for all five seasons of the Haas team.
The 2021 season will include two new drivers for Haas, as Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen have been told they will not be retained.
Some people ask why Haas F1 Team principal Guenther Steiner still has a job in Formula 1.
It's a fair question.
The Haas team finished ninth in the Constructors’ Championship last year and it is heading for a similar result this season. In few pro sports can a team go winless (or, as in the case with F1, go without even so much as a podium) for five consecutive seasons, perform worse in Year 5 than Year 1, and yet the team's boss—the person calling the shots—would still be secure in his or her job.
What most people forget that 2020 was still only the team’s fifth season in the sport—and that Haas finished fifth overall in 2018, competing against teams which have been involved in F1 for decades.
Haas is the only new Grand Prix team in the last 10 years to still be in business. Others have changed identity, but the only new teams—Caterham, Marussia and HRT (in their various different guises)—have all foundered. Haas is still going. In part this is because of the business model that Steiner came up with to give American team owner Gene Haas the chance to enter F1.
It was possible, within the rules, to get into F1—despite the huge budgets—by buying the machinery from others. Haas did a deal with Ferrari. Some felt that this was a bad thing because it undermined the constructor status that F1 teams must have. But Steiner and Haas decided, after studying the other new teams, that their approach was not going to work. Haas pushed the limits, buying as much as was allowed to do, but it still develops its own chassis and bodywork, in league with Dallara, and with help at the time from Ferrari.
The team was always entirely open about its approach, just as Racing Point has been with its decision this year to copy the Mercedes. It’s within the rules.
Last year, Steiner admits that the team got itself into a tangle understanding how the Pirelli tires work—it is not the only team to have done that—and so the results were poor. At the end of the year, however, largely thanks to Romain Grosjean working it all out, Haas went back to its original spec of aerodynamics and the team was competitive again.
