It has incredibly been revealed that Haas boss Guenther Steiner caused the team’s website to crash for four hours – at least his popular merchandise did!
The Haas boss has become somewhat of a ‘rock star’ since the first season of the Formula 1 Netflix series ‘Drive to Survive’, with viewers tending to love the Italian’s foul-mouthed rants.
Perhaps his most famous line in the series is when he referred to his team as looking like a “f***ing bunch of “w*****s”.
With his popularity having massively risen as a result, the team decided to design merchandise, for example, t-shirts, which feature his famous comments.
READ: Helmut Marko says Sebastian Vettel can return to Red Bull, but with a pay cut
It’s safe to say a large amount of people attempted to buy the merch, despite Steiner having not tried to become a Netflix sensation.
“I don’t mind it, but I didn’t work for this,” said Steiner about his ‘rock star’ tag on the ‘Beyond the Grid’ podcast.
“It’s not something you try to do. What I try to do, to run a racing team, [is] get as competitive as possible.
“And this just happened. I can’t say without me doing anything but I didn’t do it on purpose to get there.
“It’s difficult to explain because people [say] ‘you must know’. I never think about it, it just happens.
“How does it happen? I don’t know, it’s one of those things in life – you do your job, people like it, a show comes along, they film you and that’s it, here we are.”
Steiner continued explaining that none of it was his idea, with the team being fully behind the plan to use the team principal’s famous sayings for profit!
It was when the site crashed as a result of high demand that the team truly realised that perhaps they need to divert their merchandise focus from the drivers.
“The team decided, not me,” he said.
“They told me ‘Guenther, we are gonna make T-shirts with a few things you are saying on [them] and see if we can sell them.
“It’s not me personally that gets any profits from it. Obviously in the beginning they didn’t print tens of thousands of it and they sold out I would say in a day or so.
READ: ‘Overrated as hell’: Fans react to Lewis Hamilton nomination
“They even told me the company which is doing all our merchandise and our team clothing, they put it on their website and the website crashed for four hours!
“The owner of it came to me, it had never happened to him. I said ‘I don’t know how it really works’, so I had no idea what it means.
“But it’s good for the team.”