After a disastrous 2023 season resulting in Haas finishing at the bottom of the constructors’ standings, Gene Haas, the team’s American owner, she opted not to renew Steiner’s contract due to the lack of progress.
Consequently, former trackside engineering director Ayao Komatsu was promoted to the role of team principal, while Steiner transitioned to a TV pundit, making his return to the paddock during the season opener in Bahrain.
Reflecting on his departure from Haas, Steiner acknowledged in his inaugural column for F1.com that he should have departed the team sooner. “Life has been good since I left Haas ahead of this season,” he wrote. “These last few weeks are the first time I’ve switched off from F1 for around a decade.
This time has been good for me. The longer time goes on, the more I can see that I stayed at Haas too long. When you step away, you get clarity – and you can see what you need to do. While you’re there, you’re in denial, you think you can do it but you cannot.”
Steiner elucidated that the relentless pursuit of minor points positions, without a realistic shot at podium finishes, had begun to erode his enthusiasm. Despite Haas’s impressive debut in 2016, achieving sixth and fifth-place finishes in Australia and Bahrain, respectively, the team failed to replicate such success in subsequent years.
“With what we had, you could still fight for being seventh, eighth, or ninth – but you couldn’t fight for podiums without the same weapons as the other guys,” he added. “Doing that in the long term is not what I want to do in life. I don’t want to be seventh again. I’ve done that. I want to be able to fight, to battle at the front.”
Drawing inspiration from the trajectories of successful teams like Mercedes and Red Bull, Steiner emphasized the importance of patience and long-term planning.
He hinted at a potential return to Formula 1 in the future, provided the circumstances align with the right project. “I would come back to F1 in the future, but it needs to be the right project, done right,” he concluded.
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