Steiner: F1 must not sacrifice sport for the show by reining in Red Bull

Red Bull has dominated the three events held so far in 2023, with Max Verstappen winning in Bahrain and Australia and his team-mate Sergio Perez triumphing in Saudi Arabia.

While some observers have expressed concerns that a year of supremacy by one team will be bad for F1 and following on from Red Bull’s dominant 2022 season, Steiner stressed that sporting integrity should always have priority over the show.

“The sport is the main thing we have to have,” he said, when asked by Autosport what the priority should be.

“The show is secondary, but I think it will sort itself out and then still we have got a good race going on in the front now with Checo and Max, that doesn’t seem to be without sparks, without show.

“There is some show element in that one now. But I’m not worried that other people will catch up.”

Steiner insisted that the current rules do not need to be changed.

“I would say they work,” he noted. “Obviously at the moment Red Bull has an advantage, but I wouldn’t say they’ll keep that advantage now for the next 20 races.

“I’m not so sure about that because everybody will catch up, and hopefully we find out how Red Bull came to this advantage and we can copy it, or do something similar.

“Everybody will be working hard. Then you never have to forget Red Bull has got the penalty from last year, they can do less development in the wind tunnel this year, so they cannot move a lot ahead anymore in theory.

“So you have to see. But they did a fantastic job. And therefore, you cannot blame the regulations for that. Because if somebody does a better job than anybody else, they should get the advantage.”

Asked what he would think of any attempt to change the rules to slow Red Bull, he said: “I mean it’s a voting system, you cannot make moves just because somebody is faster than somebody else, that’s not fair.

“If they find that something is not legal, they can adjust the rules. Safety is always a concern. But I think we need to find out in a few races what is going on really. I think we shouldn’t jump to a conclusion yet.”

Meanwhile Steiner expects the battle between the midfield teams around Haas to remain tight.

“It will depend on the race track configuration, who is in the front and who’s back,” he said. “There will be cars will be better on high-speed courses, there will be some which are better like in Monte Carlo, but we don’t know yet.

“So we will find out every race there will be some swapping around, in my opinion.”