F1's sweariest team boss is now marginally less busy after leaving Haas but, as Guenther Steiner tells James Elson, he's still living life to the full
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“Would I do it differently? Yes, maybe. I will never set up a new team again, I would buy an existing team. This is a much better way to do it. From scratch these days, it gives you so many years of headaches that you don’t really want to do it.”
Back in the here and now, Steiner expands on his new found passion for bourbon. Does the no-nonsense Italian even bother with a mixer?
“I drink whiskey neat, you know?” he says. “I am not one of those guys that fakes it – I quite like it. I’m not a connoisseur, but I’m learning a lot.
“We thought we’d boost it up a little bit with personalities – I always end up in strange places!”
However, it turns out this isn’t Steiner’s first rodeo with a special brew – and he even collaborated with his wife Gertraud on it too.
“I actually made my own wine in 2006,” he says, admitting he didn’t have time to commit to a full vineyard like his close friend and former Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto.
“I made about a 1000 bottles, it was called Weingeist [ghost wine] and my wife did the illustration for the label.
“But then if you do something, you want to do it right. You need to dedicate a certain amount of time because it is something you want to control.
“I don’t have the time now and I’m travelling all around the world still.”
A big part of all that travelling is his debut 25-date tour which is coming up in October, taking in an ‘Evening with…’ format hosted by his ghostwriter James Hogg.
After immortalising his famous “from rockstars to ****kers” line in Drive to Survive, Steiner is now channeling the spirit of Van Halen and the like himself – six of the dates are already sold out. The first gig came as a one-off experiment in Australia. After that went well, some UK dates were pencilled in.
“My agent first suggested it, and we booked 10 or 12 in October – but then they started selling out so they said we should do more,” he says. “But if people are engaged, they have fun, I have fun, it’s quite nice!”