“Drive to Survive” is going to need some new stars. Daniel Ricciardo lost his Formula 1 drive – again – earlier this week, and Gene Haas showed Guenther Steiner the door before the season even began.
Fortunately for Steiner, his appearances in Drive to Survive had already given him sufficient celebrity status to allow him to put out a book, 2023’s Surviving to Drive, which covered the team’s 2022 season. This was something of a redemptive year for the team, who had sunk to last in the championship the year before, then rebounded as they seized the opportunity to replace hapless pay driver Nikita Mazepin with Kevin Magnussen.
But 2023 proved a reality check. Haas sank back to last in the championship and Steiner paid the price as Haas elected not to extend his contract.
Soon afterwards Steiner confirmed he was working on a second book covering his decade running the team, beginning long before its 2016 debut. You might therefore expect it contains a lot of score-settling, but to be fair to Steiner you’d only be partly right.
In one respect, Steiner’s second book succeeds where the first failed, in that its narrative is more coherent. But much of what made ‘Surviving to Drive’ recurs here: This is little more than a succession of tales which will be familiar even to F1 fans who didn’t watch Drive to Survive, repackaged in “unfiltered” Steiner style reflected by the title.
Disappointingly, much of the book amounts to little more than straightforward re-tellings of Steiner’s eight seasons running Haas. During that time he must have accumulated all manner of takes these familiar stories might be embellished with, but almost none appear, save for one mirthless chapter involving a tray of baked beans.
Even the shock of the 2020 pandemic fails to inspire Steiner to extend the narrative beyond a pedestrian retelling of race results, other than to point out that several events were cancelled or postponed. The constant regurgitations of race reports are made no more bearable by Steiner’s occasional remarks to the reader that he will try to keep them to a minimum.
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The opening sections on how Haas entered F1 therefore prove the most engaging, yet here, too, there is little insight to be gleaned. Why did Haas gain a place at the table eight years ago when F1 is now so hostile to new entrants? Don’t expect to gain any useful perspective reading this.
Prolific swearing is still very much key to Steiner’s schtick, so Mohammed Ben Sulayem should look away now. Actually, the FIA president might be best advised to avoid it altogether, as Steiner has some choice words about his performance in the role compared to his predecessor.
Steiner is unequivocal about where he places the blame for Haas’s slump to last-place finishes in 2021 and 2023: a lack of investment by Gene Haas beyond the initial entry into F1, in particular the mothballing of the team’s facilities during the pandemic.
There are a few moments of entertainment to be had including some affectionate jibes at his drivers which I won’t spoil here. Though in the few places where Steiner ventures beyond his immediate area things quickly go awry, such as telling the reader YouTube was bought by Facebook (rather than Google) or airily claiming Williams’ title sponsorship deal with Rokit, which ended in a £26 million court case “worked out okay”.
I had higher hopes for Steiner’s second book, as the best passages in his first were those which addressed the earlier years of his career. I have no doubt that any team principal – certainly this one – has more engaging tales to tell.
But a superficially interesting style cannot make up for what is a deeply dull read. Yes, Ben Sulayem should avoid it, but so should everyone else.
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“Unfiltered: My incredible decade in Formula 1” by Guenther Steiner
Author: Guenther Steiner
Publisher: Bantam Press
Published: 2024
Pages: 320
Price: £22
ISBN: 9780857506238
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