AN F1 driver as the Pope, the best smelling team principle, and the date his Christmas decorations are going up are just some of the things Guenther Steiner talked about in the question-and-answer section of his new tour.
When Steiner left his role as Team Principle at Haas before the start of the 2024 F1 season, I think we all knew that wouldn’t be the last time we heard his iconic voice or saw his unique face.
If there was one thing that he is known for, other than motor racing, is his talking. It was clear to everyone that he loves to talk and so it was no surprise to anyone when he announced he would tour the UK with his new autobiography and talk about his life.
I was lucky enough to see him in Bath last Saturday where he spoke for about two hours about his life experiences which are also covered in his book, but the juicy bits came when fans were given the chance to ask him some questions.
The success of Lewis Hamilton
The first thing asked was a joke question about Christian Horner, but that will be left out for legal reasons, but the first serious one was to find out if Steiner saw Lewis Hamilton as a seven- or eight-time World Champion.
“I think he should be an eight-time world champion” were the words that came out of his mouth, and these were met with thunderous applause from the 1600 people in the Bath Forum.
“This is how I see it, it’s an opinion, it’s not a fact. What happened there was something done wrong, from the race direction. I think there was no mal intention.
“Michael Massey, who was the race director at the time, is a friend of mine, maybe he’s not anymore, he tried to find a solution to a race situation where he could make everybody happy, and it was not possible.
“You should just go by the rule book, So at least if it goes wrong you say I followed the rule books, what more could I do. He is not the authority who writes the rule book, he is just the one who has to implement it.
“He tried to find something which wasn’t there, and it went wrong for Lewis and it went wrong for Michael. Lewis lost the championship, and Michael lost his job so there was nothing good coming out of it.”
On the topic of Hamilton, Steiner went on to say that he could earn himself a very prestigious seat in Italy, outside of Formula One.
“If he wins the championship next year, in 2026 he will be the new Pope.
“Hamilton to Ferrari is a good thing for Formula One, and it’s a good thing for Lewis. I think it’s his last stop as a driver in an F1 team and taking on that challenge is pretty cool.
“Hopefully Ferrari have a good car next year so he can show what he can do. If he wins the drivers’ championship or the constructors, he will be the greatest of the greatest,
“If he doesn’t win a championship, he is still the greatest of the greatest because he has won seven world championships so there is not a lot to lose for him but a lot to gain.”
With Hamilton going to Ferrari, his new team Principle will be Fred Vasseur, who was one of the two options given to Guenther to chose from when asked who smells better.
The other was Mattia Binotto who used to be at Ferrari and Steiners answer was “I’ve never sniffed them out,” so we will have to wait a bit longer to find that one out.
The rockstars of the season
In the time he has been out of a job in F1, the former Haas boss has appeared on the Red Flags Podcast where he decides who his rockstars and ‘vankahs’ – as he says it in his thick Italian-Austrian accent- were for the previous race weekend.
A ‘vankah’ in this instance is someone who has not done very well and the spelling represents how Guenther would usually say the word that is perhaps too inappropriate for Solent Sports News.
So when he was asked to give his rockstar and vankah of the f1 2024 season so far, he had this to say.
“I would say McLaren are the rockstars, what they have done this year is pretty cool coming from where they were.
“You can say they could’ve done better, Lando could’ve done better to be honest, but anyway, as a team they did good because they basically stopped the dominance of Red Bull which the sport needed
“And the vankahs… I would say Sauber. They are going to be Audi, they are owned by Volkswagen, the second biggest car manufacturers in the world and they have zero points”
Guenther and his language
Earlier this month, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc found himself in a bit of trouble for swearing in a news conference and was fined 10,000 euros for it.
It was followed by an official complaint by the Grand Prix Drivers Association asking he FIA to treat the drivers more like adults.
Steiner is known for swearing on the Netflix show Drive to Survive so he was, not surprisingly, on the side of the drivers with this one.
“With the swear penalties, I think there are a lot of issues with the sport in that part of it and the weakest one is how to regulate it and stewards decisions focusing on penalising people who say the f-word.
“Which is not a good thing to say, I’m not saying it’s a good thing but it’s not a bad thing as well, we are in 2024, sometimes it slips out, you know.
“It attracts so much attention so much energy for something which really has no consequence for anyone in the sport.
“Then you have stewards decisions like we had is Austin, Texas and then in Mexico, the complete opposite and no one knows now what gets penalised and how much it’s wrong.”
The Texas and Mexico incidents he mentioned here were two very similar infringements by Verstappen involving pushing another driver off track, but different penalties were given.
“I think the FIA needs to focus on what is important for the sport. If you give penalties, they need to be fair and they need to be consistent. To be consistent, there needs to be a change in how the stewarding is done.
“You need to have full time people there doing that and not people who change every weekend.
“I’ve been preaching this for six or seven years and I’m always told it’s not going to happen but I think it will happen in the future.
“I think I’m a little bit too emotional to be a steward, I wouldn’t want to be one by the way.”
Letting go of the Russians
When Steiner was at Haas F1 team, he had to make the difficult decision to cut Nikita Mazepin and their main sponsor Uralkali due to their links to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In making this decision, he also had to choose a driver to replace Mazepin very quickly for the 2022 season and ended up picking someone who had already driven for Hass, Keving Magnussen.
Guenther found it easier to talk to someone who he had already worked with, but did he ever think about bringing Romain Grosjean back as he was in the car at the same time as Magnussen?
“I would have to say no. I respect Romain and we became friends over the years. The problem is on a good day, I think he is one of the best formula one drivers in the world, maybe he is not anymore, I cannot judge, but on a bad day… he is not. he can make my days terrible.
“He wouldn’t listen and if something went wrong, it was just a downhill slope, and he never recovered and that’s why he never went to a big team again.
“The good days were fantastic, but the bad days were s***”
On the note of bad days being bad, Steiner’s exit from the team that he had a large hand in creating left many wondering if he would want to go back at some point in the future for an increased wage.
But that idea didn’t sound too great to him as he said “NO. even if they triple it or quadruple it, I wouldn’t go back.”
I think it’s safe to say that if Guenther Steiner does make his return to an F1 team, it won’t be Haas but don’t think that this means you won’t be seeing him around.
He will be here in Southampton tomorrow on the next stop of his tour with his book ‘Guenther Steiner Unfiltered’ and I highly recommend you go and see him as it’s a very entertaining two hours.
Oh, and the 19th of December is when he will be putting up his Christmas decorations.
