Haas’s thankless farewell to Guenther Steiner, Formula 1’s most charismatic team leader

Günther Steinerthe first employee hired by the Haas team, will not continue as principal director after a decade with America’s only Formula One team.

Gene Haas made the announcement Wednesday and indicated as much Legal guardian Komatsuthe director of engineering, who started at Haas as racing director in the first season in 2016, will assume senior director duties.

Haas said Komatsu will be responsible for the team’s strategy and performance on the track. Haas is also considering hiring a new director of operations, which will be based in Europe and focus on non-competitive issues. He is expected to work at the team’s factory in Banbury, England.

In a statement, Haas thanked Steiner “for all his efforts over the past decade,” but he did not praise to the individual who built the Haas F1 team from the ground up.

“Moving forward, as an organization, it was clear that we needed this improve our performance on the track. With the appointment of Ayao Komatsu as team leader, engineering will be at the center of our management,” said Haas.

Haas has never won an F1 race or finished on the podium, and last season finished last. In parallel with his achievements on the slopes, Steiner gained considerable popularity thanks to the series Drive to survive, which tells the behind-the-scenes story of Formula 1 on Netflix. The followers are already starting to miss her.

Steiner, with 40 years of experience in motorsport, he has led Haas F1 since the Californian entrepreneur acquired the team in 2014. The native of Merano, northern Italy, was hired to put together the organization’s structure.

When Haas debuted in F1 in 2015, Steiner drove it to eighth place in the constructors’ championship with a total of 29 points: the most achieved by a debuting team in this millennium. Haas increased his points tally to 47 in 2017 by repeating eighth place.

Kevin Magnussen joined the team in 2018 alongside Romain Grosjean and Haas jumped into the lead fifth place of classification of manufacturers. Magnussen placed ninth in the drivers’ championship.

It was the crowning achievement for Haas, which fell to ninth in 2019 and 2020, and finished last in 2021. It rebounded a bit in 2022 to finish eighth, but fell back to the bottom of the top 10 teams last season.

Haas will compete next season with the Dane Magnussen and the German Nico Hulkenberg as pilots.