Gunther Steiner criticizes Gene Haas: “I don’t know how much he wants to spend in F1”. Gunther Steiner, the former team principal of Haas, takes aim at his long-time boss.

Gunther Steiner’s Departure from Haas
The split occurred a year ago, but the wounds may not have fully healed. Gunther Steiner, the iconic team principal of Haas since its F1 debut in 2016, who has since been replaced by Japanese engineer Ayao Komatsu, has once again criticized the approach of the small American team. According to the South Tyrolean manager—who has become a star thanks to his fiery outbursts captured in Netflix’s docuseries *Drive to Survive*—Gene Haas has too little ambition, a stance Steiner believes is destined to fail in a competitive environment like the paddock.

Gunther Steiner Speaks Out
“I don’t know how much Mr. Haas still wants to invest,” Gunther Steiner said in an interview with *Ouest France*, “given that the team remains the smallest in the paddock, both in terms of staff and facilities. Surviving in this ever-growing world is difficult, but my feeling is that he’s content to sit in the lower half of the standings and simply participate. That’s what frustrated me.”

“I don’t put in so much effort,” he added, “just to take part. I love the Olympic spirit, but that’s not me. I want to push forward with a clear goal, while I’m not sure what he wants to do. To be honest, my time at Haas had run its course. I built the team, and I’m proud of that. What Mr. Haas does is none of my business, and to be completely transparent, I don’t care. Maybe, with what I know now, I would have left the team in 2022. We weren’t going anywhere because we were constantly trying to ‘do more with less,’ while everyone else was doing… ‘more with more.’”