Gunther Steiner has confirmed that he left Haas over a disagreement with the team owner about whether the small American team needed to change direction in Formula 1.
The team’s long-time and now former boss, Steiner, admits Gene Haas’ phone call around the Christmas break "came out of nowhere" - and resulted in the owner telling him his contract would not be renewed for 2024.
"You work with someone for ten years and then you get a call like that - that’s strange," Steiner told the Dutch magazine Formule 1. "But otherwise I was ok.
"I just move on, it’s fine."
Haas slumped to dead last in the constructors’ championship last year, mainly because the 2023 car burned through its tyres at such an alarming rate in the grands prix.
But after two races in 2024, Haas has scored a point - unlike Williams, Sauber, RB and Alpine.
"It’s like gold dust because we have five top teams and the rest of us are effectively competing for tenth place," Steiner’s successor Ayao Komatsu told Ekstra Bladet newspaper.
"We are the smallest team, so I assume that whatever we found in terms of laptime over the winter, the others found too. As a minimum," he warned.
Steiner says he warned team owner Gene Haas that he needed to make fundamental changes to avoid dropping to tenth once again this season. When Haas disagreed, it led to the split.
"Something had to change," Steiner, now a pundit for German and French television, said.
"I’m not saying Haas did it wrong - it’s just that everyone else did it right. Formula 1 has changed from when Haas started to where it has gone in the last five years. It’s a completely different playing field now. They’re all strong teams.
"If you understand the sport, you just have to open your eyes and look at what the others are doing. And Haas doesn’t do that," he insisted. "At some point, you won’t get anywhere with this approach. It’s just not appropriate anymore."