STUART CODLING
“Steiner’s latest radio tirade has got him in trouble with the FIA”
Netflix’s acclaimed F1 documentary series made a star of Haas team principal Gunther Steiner, a man who wears his heart on his sleeve and has a welldocumented penchant for speaking his mind colourfully. He says he hasn’t watched the programme.
But now he’s handed its makers a tricky decision, because one of his eminently quotable tirades has got him into trouble with the sport’s governing body.
A radio communication between
Steiner and Kevin Magnussen during the Russian Grand Prix is what’s attracted the FIA’S ire. Magnussen was displeased when he was notified of a five-second time penalty that dropped him from eighth to ninth place, and Steiner stood by his man. Some, but not all, was broadcast.
“If we didn’t have a stupid idiotic steward we would be eighth,” runs the transcript of the conversation.
“You know who is the steward, you know him? It is always the same, he just does not get any more intelligent.”
Now, while those who attend church on Sundays rather than watching motor racing will know that the good Lord tells us to “turn the other cheek” when faced with such invective, the FIA is rather more thinskinned. In Suzuka Steiner was summoned to the stewards – one of whom, Gerd Ennser, may have been the individual his rant concerned – and fined €7500.
The FIA described Steiner’s fulmination as “an insult to the stewards of the event and calls into question both the skills and the integrity of those stewards”.
Not only that, he “caused moral injury to FIA officials”.
“While any factual criticism of steward panel decisions is always welcomed in private discussions with that panel,” said the FIA statement, “public personal attacks against individual officials are totally inappropriate and will not be accepted.”
I’m told that young folk, along with those who dwell in web forums or comment ‘below the line’ on Youtube videos (a number of overlapping constituencies best expressed in the form of a Venn diagram, perhaps), describe this sort of peevish harrumphing as “butthurt”.
While I sympathise with the unfortunate victim of this ghastly vituperation, perhaps now is the time to shimmy one or two steps backwards and take a broader perspective of the whole thing. We’re in the entertainment business, right?
I’m all for a bit of needle in sport (though perhaps not in the same way as Lance Armstrong). People complain that F1 is becoming jejune and, if we stifle its characters, we’re simply accelerating that progression towards tedium.
And in any case – sticks and stones, Gerd…