Guenther Steiner says Haas barred him from the stewards’ room after fines piled up
Guenther Steiner has never been one for half-measures, and that apparently included his trips to see the FIA stewards. The former Haas team boss revealed he was, at one point, banned by his own team from attending post-race hearings after his fiery interventions kept triggering fines.
Speaking on the Red Flags podcast after the Brazilian Grand Prix, Steiner questioned why McLaren didn’t push harder over Oscar Piastri’s 10-second penalty for the Turn 1 clash with Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli — a hit that ricocheted Charles Leclerc out of the race. Asked how he’d have handled it had it been one of his drivers, Steiner admitted the team eventually took the car keys to the stewards’ office away from him.
“At the end of the race, I would have gone to the stewards,” he said, before adding with a shrug you could hear through the microphone: “At some stage, the team didn’t let me go to the stewards anymore. They said, ‘Guenther, you’re not allowed to go,’ because I got penalties, and I had to pay fines. Sooner or later they all told me, ‘Your opinion doesn’t help, and how you speak with the people.’”
You don’t need Drive to Survive to imagine the scene. Steiner’s bluntness made him a cult figure — and a recurring donor to the FIA’s fine fund — during his tenure running Haas. He pushed back on decisions he felt were wrong, even if he admits he sometimes “overdid it.”
“But then if they are doing something which I think is wrong, I need to tell them,” he continued. “And they are just like, ‘No, we think we are right.’ And if you get all this bollocks, as you normally get there, it’s like… It’s not an easy job. I would never want to be a steward, especially working for free.”
Steiner’s gripe this time was the handling of Piastri’s penalty in São Paulo. McLaren accepted the sanction, but Steiner argued he’d have at least gone in to make the team’s case — as he would’ve done in his Haas days if the boot had been on Kevin Magnussen’s foot. Whether he’d have changed the outcome is another matter. “Will you win it? You don’t know,” he said. “But you always have to try. That’s my opinion.”
The backdrop to all this is familiar territory in modern F1: the gray zones of stewarding, consistency, and how — or whether — teams escalate borderline calls. The right to request a review has become a tactical weapon in recent years, yet teams also know there’s little upside in picking every fight, particularly on a day when damage is already done.
Haas, for its part, eventually decided the upside of Steiner’s passion didn’t outweigh the cost. The calls, the tone, the fines — they all added up. In the end, the team told its own boss to sit the meetings out.
Steiner left Haas at the end of 2023 and was replaced by Ayao Komatsu ahead of the 2024 season. The American outfit has pushed on under new leadership, but Steiner’s voice hasn’t exactly faded into the background. If anything, from the sidelines he’s even freer to say the quiet part out loud — about stewarding, about how teams posture, and about the sometimes maddening logic of racing politics.
It’s classic Guenther: sharp edges, candid takes, a joke at his own expense — and just enough needle to make everyone shift in their seats. Whether he’s in the stewards’ room or not, he still knows how to make his presence felt.
