Marko Sparks Rumors Following Steiner’s Haas Exit

Guenther Steiner, the former Haas boss, became a “victim” of his popularity and left because he allegedly tried to parlay that popularity into team ownership. Haas recently dropped a bombshell by announcing that Steiner had stepped down as team president, with long-serving on-field engineering director Ayao Komatsu being announced as their new team boss.

“No one was happy with the results in 2023,” Steiner said in an interview with Sky Sports F1, while describing a season in which Haas returned to the bottom of the Champions Cup standings as a big surprise, saying “I didn’t expect this”.

Although Haas is still a team without an F1 podium, Steiner has become one of the most popular team bosses on the grid with his nonsensical but entertaining personality, thanks to Netflix’s popular F1 documentary “Drive to Survive”.

However, according to Helmut Marko, reports that Steiner was trying to turn his new fame into becoming a partner in the team may not have gone down well with team owner Gene Haas.

“Let’s put it this way: Anyone who becomes very popular through a documentary like Netflix, it usually goes up,” Marko said. “But if you fly too high too fast, you will fall just as fast.

“I just heard he tried to parlay his popularity into team shares. And that didn’t appeal to owner Gene Haas anymore.

Franz Tost gave his opinion on the Steiner situation when asked as chief of the previous Red Bull’s second team and possible advisor to future Red Bull teams. He preferred to stay away from additional speculation, but thought that in terms of results, Steiner’s departure could be due to them heading down a multi-pronged concept route with their unsuccessful B-Spec VF-23 unveiled at the 2023 American Grand Prix.

Having picked up just 12 points in 2023, Haas are now hoping for a much-improved F1 2024 campaign after finishing bottom of the standings in two of the last three campaigns.