"We get less money, that's the plan": Haas team principal on possibility of 11th F1 team
Haas boss Guenther Steiner has shared his views on Andretti looking to become the 11th team in F1. They have been recently approved by the FIA and are in talks to get a slot on the grid in 2026. Andretti are set to become the second American team in the sport, after Haas.
Speaking about the new F1 entrant on the Sky Sports YouTube channel, Steiner said that he doesn't know how things are progressing with the Andretti-Cadillac team.
He also added that the F1 teams have an opinion on whether an 11th team should be added to the grid or not, but they cannot vote for it.
"Having GM (General Motors) in as a player is fantastic. I don't know the exact details; what else is going on.
"And I continue to say that with Andretti, I haven't actually heard from in weeks if not months already about what are the next step. We (F1 teams) don't have a vote in it. We have an opinion, as we said before, but we don't have a vote."
When it comes to managing his own team's financial situation if Andretti-Cadillac joins the grid, the Haas team boss was blunt and admitted that every F1 outfit will receive less money than they are now. That's because the prize money will be divided among 11 teams compared to the current ten.
"Yeah, we get less money; yeah, that's the plan. We need to know in the moment. ... no one wants to get less money.
"We haven't been proposed anything or we know what is on the table at the moment under the regulations, but nothing more. I'm just waiting (for) the next move from F1."
Haas team boss explains team's poor development in 2023
The Haas team boss also shed light on his team's poor performances in 2023: they were simply not able to find any performance during the development of the car.
The lack of performance from upgrades, according to Guenther Steiner, were not because of a lack of money or effort from the team. Speaking to The Race, he said:
“We got hit pretty badly with not making progress in development. We put all the effort in; there was no limitation on effort, and we had the budget to do upgrades.
"Everybody thinks we don't do upgrades because we don't have the money, but we didn't find any performance; that was the biggest thing.”
Steiner also added that Haas were a bit late in realising the lack of substantial increase in performance. Nico Hulkenberg has also been complaining quite a lot about the team's inability to find any gains in pace or balance.
“And the other thing was that when we realised, it was a little bit late, and we should have caught that earlier. We just need to get better in the wind tunnel; otherwise, the team is not too bad. It could always be better, but it’s just that we didn’t find anything,” he added.
The American team ended dead-last in 2023, with only 12 points.