After a poor 2023 season, Haas decided to part ways with Günther Steiner and promote Ayao Komatsu as the new team principal.
The past
Haas has been struggling in the last few seasons, and despite trying to strengthen its relationship with Ferrari, the plan of at least battling consistently in the midfield has failed.
In 2021, the Scuderia had loaned Simone Resta to Haas, with the latter becoming the technical director of the team. However, due to struggles in improving the car’s performance, both Steiner and Resta have parted ways with the American outfit.
And the future…
Therefore, Ayao Komatsu will be the new chief of Haas’s pit wall. But who is he, and what has he done before joining the American team?
Back in 2003, Komatsu entered the racing world with British American Racing, covering the role of tire engineer. Three years later, he joined Renault and became a performance engineer. He was later promoted to the race team and experienced working with drivers of the caliber of Nelson Piquet Jr., Romain Grosjean, and Vitaly Petrov.
In 2011, he became the race engineer of the aforementioned Russian driver in Formula 1. He then worked with Grosjean, who was even battling for podiums and race wins at the time. Komatsu then became chief race engineer at Lotus, and having formed a great friendship with the French driver, he followed him when he joined Haas in 2016.
Following his move to the American team, Komatsu has never left it and became responsible for trackside car performance and coordinator of the race engineering team.
A tough role to cover
What about now? Komatsu will have a difficult role at Haas. The American outfit has been struggling a lot, as we already said. Therefore, it will not be easy for him to get the team back on track.
Maybe finishing 10th last season might have been a blessing for him, though. In fact, Haas will benefit from a lot more time in the wind tunnel to develop its car. This could be a positive turning point for both its 2024 and 2025 seasons and may help Komatsu to have a better car to work with and achieve better results.
Not only that, Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg are experienced drivers, and this could go Komatsu’s way, too. Moreover, the Japanese already has a lot of experience in working with drivers and appointing him as the new team principal might have been the right choice.
Probably, Gene Haas hopes that the Japanese will be able to exploit the resources of the team in a better way and bring back good results. Something that Steiner struggled to do in recent seasons, with upgrade packages not delivering the step forward expected.
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