Mick Schumacher and Günther Steiner worked side by side at Team Haas for two years. Then the cooperation, which was quite complicated, especially in the final phase, ended. The reason for this was not only the missing sporting results of the young German.
It is no secret that Mick Schumacher and Günther Steiner were no longer on the same wavelength by the end of the 2022 Formula 1 season at the latest. The fragile relationship between the two was publicly documented in detail in the Netflix documentary “Drive to Survive”. In Steiner’s newly published book “Surviving to Drive”, the South Tyrolean goes into even more detail about the difficulties of working together.
“It was all difficult because Mick’s name created a lot of pressure,” Steiner writes in his book about the high expectations associated with the name Schumacher. In addition, “Schumi’s environment was never a big help for Mick,” says the South Tyrolean, who was criticized from many sides after the German was kicked out.
In the end, however, Steiner also had some good arguments on his side. Above all, the accident costs that went to Schumacher’s account. Overall, the South Tyrolean estimated the damage at around two million euros – too much money for a racing team that only has limited resources.
The Haas cash register was really tight in early 2022, when the team had to part with main sponsor Uralkali in the wake of the Russian attack on Ukraine. But according to Steiner, there was absolutely no alternative to this step.
“Had we kept Uralkali as a sponsor and had them on our livery, we would have been crucified by the media, the fans and the FIA. It would have been suicide,” he writes in his book.
“We had reached a point where our other sponsors would have left Haas if we hadn’t acted now. And if we had waited any longer, we would have had no more sponsors in the end,” Steiner explains the separation from his Russian financier.
