Haas Capitalizes on Rival Teams' Errors to Surge Ahead in Standings
Aug.20 - Underperforming rival teams have made Haas' 2024 car look better than it really is, new team boss Ayao Komatsu admits.
The team's 2023 season was so poor that it cost long-time team principal Gunther Steiner his job - with Japanese engineer Komatsu promoted into the top job.
One of Komatsu's first tasks was to warn the F1 world that Haas would almost certainly remain dead last this season. "I would never lie," he tells Auto Motor und Sport now.
"We had to stop work on the 2024 car for two months last year because of the Austin upgrade. I knew how far back that would set us. We are also by far the smallest team in the field," Komatsu explained. "If you think logically, the only possible outcome is tenth place.
"It's obvious what happened," he continued. "The others simply messed up.
"To be honest, the car we started the season with wasn't anything special. So we had to assume that the others would do a better job with three times as many employees.
"Sauber then had problems with the pitstops, Williams with the chassis, Alpine with development and weight. We couldn't have expected that."
However, there were rumours that, along with Steiner's ousting, team owner Gene Haas admitted behind the scenes that he would need to pump more money into his F1 team.
"No extra money had to be spent," Komatsu insists. "All the parts we've produced were within our planned budget.
"Gene has no problem investing in the team if we deliver at the end. We obviously had to earn his trust and prove to him that we could improve with the resources we had. But we had exactly the same budget last year.
"It's just a matter of how you use that money and how you get people to work towards a common goal."
Komatsu reveals that there's even money left in the budget for more car developments within the 2024 season. "A lot of the current car can be carried over to next year," he said.
"That's why we don't want to stop development completely now. But we also have to keep an eye on 2026. We are the smallest team in the field and therefore cannot work as much in parallel as the others."
As for the next step in the decade-old Haas team's development, Komatsu was asked whether stepping away from outsourcing - such as with Dallara and Ferrari - was in the near-term plans.
"Before you can run, you have to learn to walk," the 48-year-old Japanese answered. "Before we talk about the production of suspension and gearboxes, we have to tackle other issues first.
"Thanks to our cooperation with Ferrari, I don't have to worry about certain things for the time being. We shouldn't work on our strengths, but rather eliminate our weaknesses first."
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