Steiner Applauds Liberty Media, Domenicali for ‘More Transparent’ Formula 1

Guenther Steiner has praised the way that the FIA Formula 1 World Championship has become more transparent since Liberty Media took over and Stefano Domenicali became CEO.

Liberty Media took over the control of Formula 1 ahead of the 2017 season after buying out long-term owner Bernie Ecclestone, and they have introduced widespread changes to the sport to try and make it more open and available to everyone.

Domenicali’s appointment as CEO has also received a lot of positive feedback, and Steiner, the Team Principal of the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team, says the sport feels a lot more inclusive now than in the past with everyone being more informed of what’s going on behind the scenes.

“I think they are different. Definitely, they are different,” said Steiner to the Beyond the Grid podcast. “Everybody’s included.

“Before with Bernie, the big teams always had a little bit of an advantage, but it’s for a good reason. They’re putting more into the sport that they are supplying power units and stuff like this.

“But I think it’s more transparent now with Stefano in charge, it’s more information. He always tries to update us on what is going on in his world [because it impacts] what our world will be, because he’s at the leading edge of it. So I think he’s just more transparent, we are more informed.”

Despite feeling that Formula 1 has improved under the current ownership group, Steiner still has a lot of respect to the way that Ecclestone ran Formula 1, feeling it was run in different times.

However, modern day Formula 1 seemingly has ten teams that are all financially stable, something that was not the case under the previous regime.

“I’m not critiquing what Bernie did, it was different times as well, we always have to think about this, the times were different, everything was different,” Steiner insisted.  “Now, F1 is a lot more popular.

“The money distribution is more equal. We have got 10 teams, which are all very stable.  In the old days, we never had 10 stable teams, there was always one or two, which were lagging behind the thinking a little bit so now it’s very stable.

“But that was achieved in the way Liberty Media approached the sport, they wanted all 10 teams to be able to commercially survive. So we have a good show and nobody’s struggling.”