A winning Formula

Formula 1's Guenther Steiner is bringing his talking tour to Cheltenham Town Hall this weekend

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FASTEN your seatbelts for a thrilling time as former Haas Formula 1 team principal and Netflix Drive to Survive star Guenther Steiner tours this summer with lots of stops in the West Country.

Unfiltered Live will immerse fans deeper than ever into the world of Formula 1, featuring exclusive, access-all-areas insights as Guenther shares the twists and turns of his incredible career, bringing fans into the heart of the pit lanes, circuits and characters.

With more than a decade of experience, Guenther has been at the heart of some of the sport’s most dramatic moments.

We caught up with him for a quick chat ahead of his tour.

HOW DID YOU COME TO WORK IN F1?

I grew up in Merano, in the north of Italy, in the mountains, and there was no motorsport there. But despite that, I always loved racing cars, they were my passion as a kid. Every year, I always asked my father, to go to the one race in the region, which was about 40k from home and we went.

After I had completed National Service, and was studying engineering, I saw a job in a racing magazine advertising for a Belgian rally team - I got that job, moved to Belgium and it all went from there.

I was in rallying for about 15 years - quite a long time - when one day, I got a call from Niki Lauda, who was my childhood hero. His office called me and asked me to speak to him, and he offered me a job with Jaguar.

I didn’t have plans to move to F1, but how do you say no? After about 18 months, I went to DTM Racing - a German racing series - then came back to Jaguar for another 18 months when Red Bull bought them, then went to the States working on Red Bull's Nascar.

I loved life in the States and came up with the idea to find an investor for an F1 team and started my own team with Haas. That project started in about 2010, but then didn’t come to being until 2014/15.