A team with two rookies? Not such a good idea, as Günther Steiner also found out at Haas – that’s why the US racing team is better positioned for him in 2025
Haas as a career dead end? Curious fact: By joining Sauber, Nico Hülkenberg became the first driver ever whose Formula 1 career continued after joining the US team for the season opener in Australia – which is actually incredible given that Haas will be entering its tenth year in the premier class in 2025!
But neither Kevin Magnussen nor Romain Grosjean were able to find another F1 cockpit after their Haas intermezzo, and Esteban Gutierrez and Pietro Fittipaldi were also unable to find employment – just like Mick Schumacher and Nikita Masepin, who formed a notorious rookie driver duo under team boss Günther Steiner at the team from Kannapolis in the point-less 2021 season.
The South Tyrolean now talks about this in the Starting Grid podcast: “I think the biggest problem in my time was that there were two rookies on the team. When you have one, you can always better clarify what he could or should do. If you have two, with two such different characters, where each only looks at the other, it’s just difficult,” Steiner recalls.
Steiner: ‘I had to be careful how I intervened’
The former team principal admits: “[It] was always very difficult to find a line because as soon as you supported one, the other believed you favored the other. But it was the same for both sides. That’s why you had to be very careful how you intervened.”
Otherwise, he was always in danger of getting caught between the mills, Steiner points out: “They all had their own advisory staff around them, who also interfered a lot and simply, I would say, made politics between the two parties. That’s why you sometimes almost had to stay out of it to avoid getting into a difficult situation.”
In 2025, the South Tyrolean sees his ex-team as better positioned on the driver front, with the pairing of experienced Esteban Ocon and newcomer Oliver Bearman: “It’s just easier when you have a rookie,” says Steiner: “You can explain to him what he should do to be better – because he can look at his teammate, at data, at the experiences of his teammate.”
In a way, the 59-year-old therefore also feels sorry for his former protégés Schumacher and Masepin, who did not have this privilege at the beginning of their Formula 1 careers: “It would certainly have been better for both of them if they had had an experienced teammate at their side, that has to be said.”
Even though Steiner points out: “How they would have developed then, I don’t know.” From his point of view, the decisive factor is always: “How does the rookie react to an experienced teammate? Does he accept that he is actually there to learn from him?”
In this context, Steiner cites world champion Max Verstappen, of all people, as a prime example: “The best thing is to drive alongside him and learn as much as possible from him. Being teammates with the best driver in the field is an advantage that no one else has. You look at his data, his behavior and everything – you can learn a lot from that.”
