Gunther Steiner, a true MotoGP rookie: what surprised him and the challenge for Liberty Media

Gunther Steiner, Tech3 owner, comments on his MotoGP “debut,” between surprises and an invitation to Liberty Media.

Still being able to be surprised, despite vast motorsport experience. Gunther Steiner, 61, after working in rallying, F1, and NASCAR, is in a sense the true MotoGP rookie this year after taking over the Tech3 team. His “outside eye,” however, also brings a fresh perspective, leading him to admire the riders’ immense commitment off-track as well, along with the associated risks, far greater than, for example, those faced by F1 drivers. And he sends a kind of message to Liberty Media on the marketing front: MotoGP doesn’t need to be made attractive—which it already is, in the South Tyrolean manager’s view—but simply needs to be shown better.

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“I underestimated what it means to be a MotoGP rider.” Gunter Steiner acknowledges being surprised by many aspects of the MotoGP World Championship, such as the level of preparation all riders commit to. “I didn’t think they trained so much on bikes,” he admitted in an interview with Motorsport-Total. In fact, the Tech3 boss recalls a question he once asked that he now considers naive. “I asked [the riders] what they did between Grands Prix to prepare. They answered: ‘I ride my bike.’” A reply that struck Steiner, who had just arrived from F1, where off-track work is mostly done on a simulator. The comparison is inevitable. “If you crash into a wall in a Formula 1 simulator, the game restarts and you keep driving. If you fall off a motocross bike, an ambulance comes to get you,” he admitted, highlighting the risks.

As a former F1 figure, the Tech3 owner also thinks about this aspect. The message to Liberty Media may not be that explicit, but even if implied it’s very clear, since once they took over MotoGP, this task is part of the job. “They completely forgot about everything else: the commercial aspects, the opportunities to offer something to the fans,” added Gunther Steiner, referring to the period before Liberty Media’s arrival. He does, however, emphasize one point: “You don’t have to make it attractive, you just have to show it. You just have to point out that it exists.” The South Tyrolean manager’s view is that MotoGP is already a strong product in itself, without needing “pushes” to make it so, but that it’s not being showcased properly. “You don’t need to sell it; it sells itself. That’s my approach,” he explained. “They simply focused on the product and not on marketing the product. But that’s precisely why I think the MotoGP product is so strong.”