Coming into last season, Haas had expectations to be better than they had been in a few years. Before 2022, they hadn’t finished about 9th in the constructors since their standout 2018 in which they finished 5th. 2022 they had finished 8th with two drivers who were fairly well acclimated to the team: Mick Schumacher and Kevin Magnussen. The decision to then sack Schumacher wasn’t really a surprise as he was pretty heftily outpaced by his teammate who hadn’t raced in F1 since 2020. His replacement was someone who was considered the best substitute in the sport, Nico Hulkenberg. Together, this dynamic, veteran pairing was supposed to help the team by putting in consistently good performances and more importantly, keep the car out of the wall. This, however, wasn’t exactly the case.

While the 2023 Haas car was incredible in qualifying; Hulkenberg making 8 Q3 appearances with Magnussen making it thrice, it lacked severely come Sunday. The car seemingly was hard to drive as both drivers had costly crashes, not an ideal scenario for a team who already struggles with money. Not only did the car not have a “strength”, but it would also chew through tires faster than any car on the grid. This led to only 4 combined points finishes for the American team, scoring a pitiful 12 points and having them fall down to last in the constructor’s championship. The big issue for Haas, and to be quite frank it always has been, was money. This is what led ultimately to, now former Team Principal, Gunther Steiner leaving the team earlier today

According to sources, Steiner was asking team owner, Gene Haas, to increase the funding into the team to make strides and recover from the forgetful last couple of years. However, Haas declined. Now don’t get me wrong, I am in no way shape or form someone who supports Steiner. In my opinion he did an abysmal job in handling Mich Schumacher’s short tenure by seemingly blaming more than what he was responsible for on the young driver rather than owning up to the fact that the car itself wasn’t very good. His brash and impudent personality depicted by Netflix’s Drive to Survive made him a popular character and fan favorite. While it was entertaining to watch him tell Magnussen to not “fuck smash” his door, he did a horrible job in developing drivers and furthering development of the car. This is why I hope and pray Ollie Bearman, the top rookie in F2 last year, stays far away from Haas in 2025 when he will most likely be looking to making the jump from F2 to F1.

Steiner, in my opinion, is similar to Matteo Binotto in the sense that they thrive in engineering roles, rather than management roles. My hope is that with new Team Principal Ayao Komatsu, they can make a more levelheaded approach forward. Komatsu had always impressed me while he was a race engineer for the team. I believe he was a big reason that Mick Schumacher had his little success while at the team, as he was able to keep Schumacher calm and focused on the race and reducing mistakes by him. I would love for a positive turnaround for them and to see Hulkenberg get his first F1 podium, but one can only hope.