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Guenther Steiner believes MotoGP can learn from Formula 1’s growth but that the two-wheeled championship has to be wary not just to copy the blueprint. Steiner spent eight seasons at the helm of Haas’ Formula 1 team, from 2016 through 2023, before leaving the championship ahead of the 2024 campaign. Steiner’s public reputation grew off the back of his prominent role in Netflix’s Drive To Survive docuseries, which was one of the cornerstones of Formula 1’s growth under Liberty Media, which took over the championship in 2017. Liberty Media acquired MotoGP in mid-2025, and a few months later Steiner led a consortium that took over the Tech3 team, of which he became CEO. “I’m pretty happy doing it,” he says of his new life in MotoGP, ahead of the upcoming British Motorcycle Grand Prix at Silverstone. “It’s a sport which is growing—everybody wants to grow—and if I can help to do that, I’m more than happy to do that.” Steiner is clearly a driving force in suggesting ideas both for Tech3 and MotoGP itself, which has struggled for widespread interest in recent years, particularly after the retirement of Valentino Rossi. “I think it is a little bit maybe like F1 was 20 years ago,” Steiner says. “I think the potential is immense, what is there, as a sport. You can keep the costs a lot lower for the sport, because the bike is smaller, there’s not the potential to spend that amount of money like on a car. “When these guys go side-by-side it’s something amazing, it’s got potential, to compare to Formula 1 is difficult, it’s not better or worse, it’s different. MotoGP doesn’t have to look at what Formula 1 has to do, they can write their own story, you don’t have to copy/paste, what you have to do is [exploit] the commercial opportunity. Formula 1 was big under Bernie [Ecclestone], before Liberty, but with Liberty they gave it another spike. I think Liberty can do that, maybe not at the scale as Formula 1, you need to be realistic, as I think Formula 1 is the second-biggest global sport, but it can be very big. “The racing, MotoGP doesn’t need help, leave it alone, in my opinion, but the rest of it, the presentation, F1 is top, MotoGP is good, but they could use the help of F1.” MotoGP has not had a full-time American rider since the late great Nicky Hayden contested the 2015 campaign. It is part of a wider trend whereby all but one of the top 12 in the current standings are Spanish or Italian, and where only seven full-time riders hail from outside of those two nations. “It is too much focused on the southern European market—even the Italians are not as big anymore as five years ago—in the end what we have to admit is Spain brings out most of the talents,” Steiner says. “We have to analyze why: Their structure in Spain works, it’s a numbers game, there’s so many kids riding in Spain trying to get to MotoGP, then when you have 1,000 Spanish kids and [maybe] 50 [from the] rest of the world, it’s easy to find [one from] the 1,000. “It’s a problem, we need to not push Spain down, but try and bring other countries up, we need to make sure other talent is found in other places of the world—it wasn’t so long ago that Americans were big in MotoGP, before Nicky Hayden there was Kevin Schwantz, Freddie Spencer, Randy Mamola, King Kenny, and then it drifted away. If we can get that reignited again, then MotoGP will be big in the States. In Indonesia and Malaysia, there’s riders coming up, driven by a program Honda started in Asia to bring young kids up.” Despite his focus on MotoGP, Steiner remains involved in the Formula 1 landscape, acting as an occasional pundit on German TV—and retaining a presence in the paddock. “I think some of the races they are not perfect, I must stay, some were very good, I always see the good things,” he says. “I think also how F1 reacted to what it started the season [with] was pretty good. I was surprised they had to react [with the regulations], that the reaction was not before the first race, going to Australia and like ‘Wow, we have this problem,’ it’s like, F1 is very good at predicting and simulating everything and we go and are not ready, but the reaction was good, there will be work done for the future. “I find the championship very interesting, you never know who is going to win the race, before the season we were scared Mercedes would walk away with it, it’s not happening, we had three different teams winning, Max [Verstappen], I think will win a race before the end of the year, so [that would be] four teams winning races, it’s good.” Steiner quips that he would never be as negative as a journalist, when offering views, but does joke that being in front of the camera provides a different perspective. “You look differently, because what I realized if you’re a pundit, you don’t look at 11th or 12th! I don’t think many people do, and when you’re running a team finishing usually between 10th and 15th, you think that’s the most important thing in the world! If you take a point, you feel great, but nobody outside really cares, people want to know who’s on the podium!” U.K.-based Phillip Horton started covering Grands Prix while still at university and swiftly deemed that writing about Formula 1 and the behind-the-scenes machinations was much more engaging than reading centuries-old novels. Degree gained, he went on to cover the sport full-time from 2014 and is as intrigued and excited by the destinations Formula 1 visits during its lengthy annual world tour as the racing itself. Phillip joined Autoweek in 2021 and while he has just about learned to spell in American English he has yet to find anywhere in America that makes a proper cup of tea.