"I have got plenty of stuff to do" - Axed F1 boss Guenther Steiner not in immediate hurry to return to the sport
Former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner is in no immediate hurry to return to Formula 1 following his departure.
The F1 community was shocked to its core when it was announced that Haas F1 had moved forward with a major shakeup in its hierarchy, parting ways with its longstanding Italian-American figurehead Guenther Steiner.
After departing the team he had been a part of for 10 years, speculations naturally arose around Steiner's F1 future. Addressing his current situation, he shared his sentiments (via PlanetF1):
"At the moment, I’m very chilled out about the situation. I’m not unhappy and I know a lot of people, I’ve got a lot of friends and for me just hanging around for a year doing the odd job, that does it for me."
Guenther Steiner emphasized the importance of finding something truly challenging and meaningful, rather than merely staying in Formula 1 for the sake of a job. He said:
"If something interesting comes along which challenges me, yes, but just staying in Formula 1 just to do a job, maybe is not what I want to do... I don’t just want to go there and then move on to the next thing. I want to do something where you can achieve something and you try to get somewhere and then I will do it."
"But as I said, at the moment, I just want to chill out. It was 10 tough years behind me. I’m still good. I’ve got plenty of stuff to do," he added.
Guenther Steiner "not interested" in Haas' plans anymore
Guenther Steiner's departure from Haas was accompanied by a declaration of disinterest in the team's future plans. Shedding light on the evolution of Formula 1, he stated (via the aforementioned interview):
"Since we have had this model, Formula 1 has changed a lot. We saw during COVID how much bigger it grew. How much different it got with the budget cap, how we used the budget cap."
"If you look at all the other teams, they were all gearing up. They are not gearing up now. They started to gear up, some three years ago, some years ago, some last year," he added.
Expressing a lack of interest in Gene Haas's future plans, Steiner asserted:
"I don’t know Gene Haas’s plans for the future. He didn’t share them with me. He doesn’t have to, by the way. I’m actually not really interested in it anymore."
After Guenther Steiner's departure, Ayao Komatsu, the former trackside engineering director at Haas, was appointed as the new team principal.