wields a torque wrench rather like you would
expect a lumberjack to handle an axe. In short,
with t otal, natural ease. Big metal tools are simply
second nature to a man who spent his formative
motorsport years fixing battered World Rally cars
and th en engineering Colin McRae and Carlos
Sainz Sr to WRC success.
Steiner knows cars from the ground up, and
he als o knows athing or two about handling big
personalities: Sainz and McRae, then Niki Lauda
and E ddie Irvine, as part of Jaguar’s F1 works
team of the early noughties. Shrinking violets
they w ere none. Looking for a no-nonsense,
take-no-prisoners leader for your Formula 1
team? You could do a lot worse...
That said, last seasoncould not have gone
much worse for Haas. After three seasons of
overachievement and progress, Haas avoided
tumbling to the bottom of F1’s pileonly because
of the shambles that overwhelmed Williams.
The Haas VF-19 amassed fewer points than any
of its predecessors. It was sporadicallyfast, but
terribly inconsistent – unable to prevent the
Pirelli tyres from immediately overheating into
oblivion in races. Aerodynamic upgrades made
no difference, such that Haas finished 2019 with
the car in the specification it began in. That must
have been, well, a ‘wrench’ for all concerned.
And the trouble didn’t end there. Therewas
the very public, and frankly embarrassing, saga
with title sponsor Rich Energy and its mercurial
mouthpiece William Storey, plus the team’s
drivers – Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen- repeatedly colliding, despite explicit
instructions not to. Had Guenther been holding
that torquewrench during a crunch meeting after
the British Grand Prix at Silverstone,well, the
nuts he wouldlikely have used it on hardly bear
thinking about... As the man himself puts it,
“I know when I’m angry, I’m not a nice person.”
“When you are on adownward spiral
everything gets more difficult,” Guenther says,
reflecting on the various travails and lessons of
Haas’s worst season so far in F1. “Lastyear we
didn’t help ourselves with the drivers colliding
when we had chances to make points.
“I think it’s a consequence of once something
goes bad it goes bad properly.
“The Rich Energy case had nothing to do with
what our car was, but for sure it’s adistraction.
How big it wasfor me personally? At some
stage I realised I could not do anything about it
anyway, because I was in the hands of ‘can he
find more money or not?’ That was more living
a situation andto get the best out of it with the
least bad publicity for anybody.
“It consumed some energy, but actually not
a lot. The performance of the car was more
consuming, and the worst thing was this up and
down [from qualifying to race] – that consumes
you pretty badly.”
After such impressive linear progress
from 2016-18, includingthrough the major
aerodynamic rule changes of 2017, it was
surprising to see Haas struggle with the relatively
minor tweaks enforced ahead of last season. It’s
no secret that Haas does F1 in a very different
way to its rivals: buying as much technology
from Ferrari as possible and outsourcing most of
the other work to keep the core team as lean as
possible. It seemed to be working well until last
year’s hiccup, so was this a case of the lean, mean
outsourcing machine finally coming a cropper?
Steiner thinks the reality is more nuanced.
“I think there are two elements,” he says. “First
is obviously the resources. I think it’s a little bit
experience-wise as well. Except me, everybody’s
pretty young here! And a lot of the guys are
not young in age only, but also intheir jobs, in
their responsibility. The experience was missing
to have been in thissituation before, and our
reaction wasn’tcorrec t.
“That has nothing todo with the [business]
model except that we are a new team. I think
if we’d been more experienced we would have
scratchedour heads more after [the] Barcelona
upgrade [didn’t work] instead of believing in the
good newsthat the car is quick. We should have
reacted more thoroughly and focused on our
problem in Barcelona.”
The problem Steiner refers to is that“the
development didn’t work,” hesays with a10 0 GP RACING MARCH 2020G
UENTHERSTEINER
a torque wrench rather like you would
t a lumberjack to handle an axe. In short,
otal, natural ease. Big metal tools are simply
d nature to a man who spent his formative
sport years fixing battered World Rally cars
en engineering Colin McRae and Carlos
Sr to WRC success.
iner knows cars from the ground up, and
o knows athing or two about handling big
nalities: Sainz and McRae, then Niki Lauda
ddie Irvine, as part of Jaguar’s F1 works
of the early noughties. Shrinking violets
ere none. Looking for a no-nonsense,
o-prisoners leader for your Formula 1
You could do a lot worse...
t said, last seasoncould not have gone
worse for Haas. After three seasons of
chievement and progress, Haas avoided
tumbling to the bottom of F1’s pileonly because
of the shambles that overwhelmed Williams.
The Haas VF-19 amassed fewer points than any
of its predecessors. It was sporadicallyfast, but
terribly inconsistent – unable to prevent the
Pirelli tyres from immediately overheating into
oblivion in races. Aerodynamic upgrades made
no difference, such that Haas finished 2019 with
the car in the specification it began in. That must
have been, well, a ‘wrench’ for all concerned.
And the trouble didn’t end there. Therewas
the very public, and frankly embarrassing, saga
with title sponsor Rich Energy and its mercurial
mouthpiece William Storey, plus the team’s
drivers – Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen- repeatedly colliding, despite explicit
instructions not to. Had Guenther been holding
that torquewrench during a crunch meeting after
the British Grand Prix at Silverstone,well, the
nuts he wouldlikely have used it on hardly bear
thinking about... As the man himself puts it,
“I know when I’m angry, I’m not a nice person.”
“When you are on adownward spiral
everything gets more difficult,” Guenther says,
reflecting on the various travails and lessons of
Haas’s worst season so far in F1. “Lastyear we
didn’t help ourselves with the drivers colliding
when we had chances to make points.
“I think it’s a consequence of once something
goes bad it goes bad properly.
“The Rich Energy case had nothing to do with
what our car was, but for sure it’s adistraction.
How big it wasfor me personally? At some
stage I realised I could not do anything about it
anyway, because I was in the hands of ‘can he
find more money or not?’ That was more living
a situation andto get the best out of it with the
least bad publicity for anybody.
“It consumed some energy, but actually not
a lot. The performance of the car was more
consuming, and the worst thing was this up and
down [from qualifying to race] – that consumes
you pretty badly.”
After such impressive linear progress
from 2016-18, includingthrough the major
aerodynamic rule changes of 2017, it was
surprising to see Haas struggle with the relatively
minor tweaks enforced ahead of last season. It’s
no secret that Haas does F1 in a very different
way to its rivals: buying as much technology
from Ferrari as possible and outsourcing most of
the other work to keep the core team as lean as
possible. It seemed to be working well until last
year’s hiccup, so was this a case of the lean, mean
outsourcing machine finally coming a cropper?
Steiner thinks the reality is more nuanced.
“I think there are two elements,” he says. “First
is obviously the resources. I think it’s a little bit
experience-wise as well. Except me, everybody’s
pretty young here! And a lot of the guys are
not young in age only, but also intheir jobs, in
their responsibility. The experience was missing
to have been in thissituation before, and our
reaction wasn’tcorrec t.
“That has nothing todo with the [business]
model except that we are a new team. I think
if we’d been more experienced we would have
scratchedour heads more after [the] Barcelona
upgrade [didn’t work] instead of believing in the
good newsthat the car is quick. We should have
reacted more thoroughly and focused on our
problem in Barcelona.”
The problem Steiner refers to is that“the
development didn’t work,” hesays with a10 0 GP RACING MARCH 2020
UENTHERSTEINER