"Privileged" F1 workforce don't "realise they are lucky" to have a job - Steiner

Haas

"Privileged" F1 workforce don't "realise they are lucky" to have a job - Steiner

There are more difficult things to contend with than disappointing results

Ian Parkes & Ewan Gale

Tuesday 19 January 2021 05:00

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Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has claimed Formula 1 personnel are "privileged" and do not know how lucky they are to have a job.

Teams are poised to embark on a record-breaking 23-race calendar this year in the wake of a completing an exhausting campaign last season of 17 races in 24 weekends that included multiple triple-headers.

Although Steiner described those as "not sustainable" for the sport's workforce, two long-haul triple-headers have been included in a slightly revised calendar for this year that has resulted in the Australian GP being switched to mid-November.

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Staff are again set to be stretched to the limit, but Steiner claims those who work in F1 should be grateful for what they have.

Speaking to GPFans Global prior to the recent calendar announcement, Steiner said: "It isn't easy.

"Is it difficult? There are more difficulties than this that is for sure. With the calendar with so many races, they get tired, you don't have the results and you don't get the hype and the adrenaline.

"When you are racing, you are on the back foot so, but, I don't think people realise they are also lucky to have a good, paid job in Formula 1 because with the budget cap coming, there will be fewer people in Formula 1 and everyone who has got a job here is privileged.

"For sure, they need to work hard because there are a lot of people knocking on the door for these jobs at the moment because there are going to be less."

Haas started life in F1 in 2016 with a bang as Romain Grosjean picked up points in its debut race, but since 2018 fortunes have taken a sharp downturn.

Steiner pointed to a lacklustre 2019 car and a subsequent overhang in addition to the pandemic as reasons for an under-par two seasons.

"I think in 2019, the car was not at it's best, and I think we recovered quite a bit of that by the end of the year ahead of last year," he added.

"But last year, the car we had out was not the car we wanted to run for the whole season but then in the pandemic, there was the lockdown and at some stage, we just had to do the survival game.

"Then we didn't develop and once we knew and defined what we wanted to do in the future, it was too late to do development. It slipped away in 2019 but we just had a bad year, which happens.

"We were working hard to get out of that bad year but then the pandemic happened and knocked us back another step.

"We never recovered from that one and I don't think with this car, with the technical regulations, we will not recover because we are too far behind but we still don't give up. We will try to make a better car for this year."