Say it ain’t so! Guenther Steiner axed as Haas team principal

Well this isn’t the way we wanted 2024 to start: Guenther Steiner has been removed from his role as team principal of the Haas F1 team after a decade in the job. Noo!

The Italian became an unlikely hero in the early days of Drive to Survive on Netflix, building a global cult following thanks to his blunt persona and, er, an almost constant flow of f-bombs.

According to reports Steiner wasn’t technically fired, but simply didn’t have his contract renewed when it expired. He’s been replaced by Ayao Komatsu, promoted from his old Director of Engineering role having worked at Haas for eight years.

“I’d like to start by extending my thanks to Guenther Steiner for all his hard work over the past decade and I wish him well for the future,” said Gene Haas, who owns the team that bears his name. “Moving forward as an organization [sic] it was clear we need to improve our on-track performances. In appointing Ayao Komatsu as Team Principal we fundamentally have engineering at the heart of our management.

“We have had some successes, but we need to be consistent in delivering results that help us reach our wider goals as an organization. We need to be efficient with the resources we have but improving our design and engineering capability is key to our success as a team. I’m looking forward to working with Ayao and fundamentally ensuring that we maximize our potential – this truly reflects my desire to compete properly in Formula 1.”

Steiner, unusually but perhaps understandably, is yet to comment.

Haas might’ve finished stone dead last in the constructors’ championship in 2023 (scoring just 12 points), but the move is still something of a shock.

The Haas gameplan has always been this: buy as many parts as is allowed under the rules from someone else. Namely Ferrari. And occasionally that’s worked quite well, with a best result of fifth place coming in 2018.

But with the team forcing Steiner to clear his desk in the pursuit of ‘success’, people will rightly ask what success actually looks like for an outfit that does as little of its own homework as it can get away with.

So long Guenther, and allow us to stick a quid in the swear jar one last time: it was a ******* blast while it lasted.