"Better to have 10 very stable teams" - Haas boss Guenther Steiner does not want FIA to take risk of 11th F1 team

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner does not think that adding an 11th F1 team on the grid is going to be a good idea for the sport.

One of the prospects that has been making efforts to become the 11th team on the grid is Andretti. Michael Andretti recently announced the start of the ambitious Andretti Global HQ that's supposed to be even bigger than Ferrari's facility at Maranello.

Despite clear interest from the American team, there has been stern resistance from much of the grid, including Mercedes boss Toto Wolff and Red Bull's Christian Horner.

Steiner finds himself on the same boat as well and he's not shown a keen interest in the addition of an 11th F1 team on the grid. In his recent interview on the Beyond the Grid podcast, he said about an additional team on the grid:

“As FOM (Formula One Management) always says, first of all, everybody thinks we are the people, the other teams, who decide what is happening. We cannot decide, we can have our opinion, but we cannot decide, deciding is for the FOM. I think F1 knows, and Stefano (Domenicali, Formula 1 president) knows that the sport is in a very good place at the moment. Putting an 11th team in, does it create more revenue? Does it make it bigger, Formula 1? I don’t think so."

He added that it's better to have ten very stable teams than an 11th team that takes a share of the revenue but is not as stable. He said:

“It’s better to have 10 very stable teams than taking the risk to have no gain, and having somebody more to share the money with you know. It’s very stable at the moment, so obviously, if an 11th team comes and they bring, let me say 10% more revenue, why not? But if an 11th team comes and just takes an 11th off the revenue which is there now, so you dilute everybody else’s revenue? Why would you do that?"

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The F1 grid with 20 cars is pretty full: Guenther Steiner

Steiner said that he feels the F1 grid is pretty full already with ten teams, and they're owned by a stable management. Steiner also cited the example of Audi and how the German giant opted to buy Sauber instead of joining as a new team. He said:

“Because I think the grid with 20 cars is pretty full, and as I said, they’re very stable, not only right now, but also for the future, because they’re all owned either by people which know what they’re doing and can run a team, or they’re owned by corporates, which we know they can continue. And we have got now Audi coming in, they decided to buy a team, not to put their own one out, because it isn’t an easy task now to put a Formula 1 team up from zero.”

There is certainly merit in what Steiner says against the addition of an 11th team on the grid.

However, an 11th F1 team will also mean more jobs being generated in the backend and more talent getting an opportunity to take part in the sport. In the last two years, the reigning F2 champion has not got an opportunity on the F1 grid, one of the reasons for that being the lack of seats available. Two extra seats would solve that problem.