Haas Boss Believes F1 Stewards are not Impartial

Haas F1 boss, Guenther Steiner is unhappy with the stewards’ decision-making skills as he believes they sometimes go with the flow and impose a penalty based on the reputation of a certain driver.

In the recently concluded Hungarian Grand Prix, Max Verstappen blocked Haas driver, Romain Grosjean in the final qualifying session, which prevented the Frenchman from giving it his all and securing a higher position on the grid.

The F1 stewards deemed Verstappen not guilty which left the Haas team in anger. According to them, it contradicts their stance in earlier races, in which they meted out some penalties to both of the Haas drivers.

“We are easy to pick on, I guess is what you’re saying?”, Steiner replied when asked the same by Motorsport.com.  

“Sometimes we don’t help ourselves to put ourselves in this position – if you didn’t need to go there you wouldn’t get the penalty.

“But if there is a decision to be taken, I still think that who you are counts for what the outcome is. It should all be without a name”, he stated.

When asked to elaborate on that statement, Steiner said, “It could be. I have no evidence, so I cannot prove it, but it could be.”

Some of the incidents which have occurred this year involve Magnussen being penalized at Baku and Spain, and Grosjean being arguably the more unlucky as he was penalized for pushing Ocon off track in France.

The Haas boss had referred to Grosjean as an easy target when he was penalized for causing a three-car crash in Spain. Charlie Whiting, F1 race director was made aware of the comments made by Steiner.

He justified the decision to not penalize Verstappen by stating that Grosjean would not have caught up to him anyway.

“I think Romain made it look worse than it was, because he just backed right out of it, and instead of trying as hard as he could he appeared to just give up.”

“Verstappen was accelerating at that time and I don’t think Grosjean could have kept up with him. For me, it wasn’t the same”, he said.