How Komatsu is succeeding where Steiner failed on Haas F1 investment

There's nothing quite like a Formula 1 driver leaving a team for honesty, breaching that media-trained facade.

“The couple of upgrades we've had this year, they've actually worked and it's the first time in Haas's history that we brought upgrades to the car that made it faster.”

Kevin Magnussen there – quietly damning with faint praise his soon-to-be former Haas squad. He would know about how that team has really advanced through its short F1 history – he’s its longest-standing driver having completed 137 races for the American outfit.

But actually, this is rather a boon for Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu. He’s now spent over half a season in charge of a team with a reputation grown far bigger than its F1 results yield since joining the grid back in 2016.

Given how bad 2023 was with a car that chomped its tyres in races and how some within Haas feared 2024 might somehow be even worse when former team boss Guenther Steiner was axed at last year’s end, this season has been quite the surprise.

For every Nico Hulkenberg points run, Magnussen’s support for his team-mate around accruing penalties (and five points along with Hulkenberg’s 22), plus all that Ollie Bearman interest – Haas now sits in a position it would’ve really envied this time a year ago.

It’s up three places in the constructors’ championship and has a points haul that has swelled by 56% already - even with 10 rounds left to add to that tally.

Hulkenberg's points scoring has elevated Haas up the constructors' table

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Autosport couldn’t have predicted that as we trudged through the unassuming Banbury housing estate that leads to the Haas team’s European headquarters on a short January day as 2024 commenced.

Not that any rays of hopeful Haas sunshine could’ve penetrated our big winter overcoat, even if Komatsu’s first media appearance hadn’t been rather puzzling.

Having been invited to get to know the new boss over coffee, it was an afternoon that promised much but revealed frustratingly little at the time. Komatsu had outlined his vision for the team principal he wanted to be, but wouldn't go into specifics, he claimed, as he was yet to speak to Haas’s managers at its design office in Maranello.

Komatsu emphasised time and again how he believed Haas could do more with what it already had

While that was rather convenient, it was clear from this first point that something had significantly shifted. He just wasn't going to be Steiner.

For Komatsu there will not be a Netflix-friendly character popping up every few minutes on Drive to Survive’s next season, although he has the swearing-heavy vocabulary for the part and the streaming giant’s cameras have been ever-present at Bearman press briefings of late, so he’ll surely make some sort of appearance (and is contractually obliged to with F1).

Komatsu also emphasised time and again how he believed Haas could do more with what it already had – chiming exactly with what team owner Gene Haas said about his decision not to renew Steiner’s contract last Christmas.

From the meeting’s subtext, it was clear Komatsu had lobbied Gene with ideas of how to improve the team, but denied he'd pushed to replace Steiner as team principal. He spoke indefinably of "short-term vision, medium-term vision, long-term vision", but the only specific he'd been drawn on was how 2024 was a "transitional phase".

Komatsu replaced Steiner as team principal ahead of the 2024 season

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Now, with those happy Haas rays clearly beating down with the very real summer sun, we can reflect on how his under-promising in the hope of over-delivering has actually shone through in his first half-season as a team principal.

We’re speaking at Silverstone – a weekend where the sun did fleetingly appear, not that anyone will remember it given days were starting in single-digit temperatures and we’d regretted not packing that comfy coat for the trip north from London.

This was just after Bearman was announced as Haas’s first 2025 driver, with Esteban Ocon not far from signing to complete the team’s all-new line-up for next year.

Driver changes are perhaps the most obvious sign of how a transitional phase is moving, albeit with the understanding that losing Hulkenberg to the Sauber/Audi project was a blow to Haas.

Here, Komatsu reveals how he's changed Haas. It starts, in his rather typical style, with being blunt to his boss.

“We cannot just say, ‘OK, Gene wants podiums, let’s hope we get podiums’,” Komatsu tells Autosport. “No, we’ve got to then plan it – ‘How are we going to go there?’

“You cannot go there overnight. You cannot go there in two years' time. You’ve got to have that strategy. It just goes to the internal communication as well. If you lay out what you want to achieve when, even if it's seven, eight, 10 years down the line, if people know that – ‘that's where we want to go’ – people put up with some of the deficiencies or less than ideal things because they all know we're not going to be just standing still here.

Clear communication is key to the improvements at Haas

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

“We have to do this to not waste time getting there, right? So, again, that comes to vision and communications.”

Komatsu had at least made that last part clear during that January meeting. But he hadn’t outlined what was already a key part of getting his vision from the short to medium and longer terms.

This was how Komatsu has invited Bob Murray – CEO of Haas Automation and Gene’s right-hand man for 38 years – to visit the Banbury base as soon as he became team boss and then attend races regularly.

"I really needed him [Gene Haas] to understand more about what it takes to be successful in F1" Ayao Komatsu

In response to our question on how helpful this has been to both him and Haas in 2024 – “massive,” he initially replies – we detect some insight into where Komatsu thinks things had been going wrong for Steiner.

“My strategy was to get people like Bob and Gene on board,” Komatsu adds. “Get them involved, get them to realise what it takes to be successful in F1.

“The previous strategy might have been opposite. But my strategy from day one is, ‘if the owner doesn't understand the reality, then of course he's going to get annoyed because he would expect the result that we cannot achieve’.

“But to get his expectations right, I really needed him to understand more about what it takes to be successful in F1. Bob is a very key part of that. So, it's great and what I'm really pleased about is, Bob made that commitment as well when he signed me.

Komatsu was keen to get Gene Haas on board with his plans as soon as possible

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“He said, ‘Ayao, I’m going to support you, I’m gonna work with you’.

“Every time he comes and he understands what we are up to, what we are up against – and then Gene and Bob were both together in Austria [where Hulkenberg finished sixth and Magnussen was eighth], which was great as well – it just goes to show from Gene and Bob, our parent company, there’s commitment. Then Bob 100% is backing it up by his actions. I'm really grateful about that.”

By the end of 2024’s third round in Australia, Haas had already taken three-quarters of the number of points finishes it managed in all the previous season. Until Jeddah this year, it had one point in 18 races.

In doing this, with a VF-24 car that is more predictable over a race stint compared to its predecessor, boosted by set-ups researched in all those testing long runs and its pilots adapting their driving to help on tyre wear, Haas could highlight the “baby steps” of tangible progress Komatsu wanted to show to Gene Haas and Murray.

Having deliberately waited until after Melbourne to ask for money to invest in something new – a key element of why Steiner’s time with the team ultimately ended – Komatsu got what he was after.

This is what he calls “a huge recruitment drive that we've never seen before in the history of Haas F1 team”.

Haas has been on a significant recruitment drive since Komatsu took over, and will feature an all-new driver line-up in 2025 of Bearman and Ocon

Photo by: Ferrari

This is set to grow the outfit of 300 by 10%. Perhaps this is the so-far-unexplained link to Toyota Masaya Kaji, general manager of Toyota Gazoo Racing who appeared as Komatsu’s guest at Silverstone, after his friend had visited the Hypercar team at Le Mans this year. The Japanese manufacturer does prize motorsport for training its young engineers, after all…

But, for far less guesswork, we learn Komatsu’s impression of the extent to which Gene Haas has been convinced by his new team principal.

“After Melbourne, I basically went with all the rejected recruitment from last year,” Komatsu explains.

"I was a bit concerned in the sense that if they approved half of it [the budget] only, that message would be, ‘that's not good, that's not serious enough’" Ayao Komatsu

“Budget time. ‘Right,’ I said, ‘this much – basically, about 30 to 35 people is priority one. If we are serious about improving performance, we need to start recruitment of this now, right?’ So that's what I put in front of them and then they basically said ‘yes’ because I had justification for every line.

“Then I was a bit concerned in the sense that if they approved half of it only, that message would be, ‘that's not good, that's not serious enough’. But honestly, Gene goes, ‘fine, go for it – all of it’. So, then that shows, ‘OK, that's good, that's brilliant’, because Gene is now seeing a baby step.

“Of course, that's not where he wants us to be, his ambition is much greater. But for what we got; he's seen enough to grant that recruitment drive. So, that was great.”

The Haas motorhome has been largely unchanged in nine years

Photo by: Gareth Harford / Motorsport Images

Also approved is a new motorhome to replace the one that has only had its glass awning extended in the nine years Haas has been on the grid. But bigger changes are afoot too – ones that could have a serious knock-on impact on Haas’s performance on-track.

Autosport understands that Haas is now planning significant upgrades to the tools in its F1 design facilities – something else happening for the first time in the team’s history. That's a big deal given how Steiner suggested he’d grown weary of asking for such investment, only to be rebuffed.

“It’s difficult to stay motivated,” he told Autosport at the Autosport International Show, back in January.

“You always try because you never give up. You try – but at some stage obviously, it becomes clear that when you are gone, because you are not in the whirlwind anymore, you are outside and you look in and you say, ‘wow, I pushed for a long time, seeing where other people are going’ since [the budget cap came in for 2021 and Steiner began pressing for investment in team areas not covered by the cap, such as factory kit, as other squads had been doing].”

But improved F1 results and backing from his bosses are not the only positive parts of the start of Komatsu’s leadership era. There are smaller signs too: Haas’s average pitstop time is 3.2s in 2024, down from 4.2s in 2023. The team hasn’t yet invested in improved kit – that’s on the list though – but instead has found gains from “human performance”, per Komatsu.

“Last year, we actually made a huge step,” he continues. “Throughout the season, it was getting better and better and better and then this year, we carried on with that.

Haas has continued the improvements started last year

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“Consistency in personnel [explains the gains]. Of course, we have a consistent leadership, [but] from the beginning of last year, the same group of people are leading the pitstops.

“Last year we had to change the crew quite a lot and then this year, we've been largely keeping it the same. When the leadership group is the same, strategy is clear, we have the personnel consistency – that all helps.”

But even with the fresh next chapter with Ocon and Bearman, 2025 is surely set to be harder weather for Komatsu and co to drive through – wind and rain challenges to drive the sunshine away.

"Honestly, I was convinced we can do better sportingly with everything we got [already]. Which we are proving now, right?" Ayao Komatsu

The current cars will be heading towards the end of their life cycles, so it will mean pressure to abandon development and direct resources to the 2026 regulation challenge. Two of Haas’s direct rivals these days – Williams and Alpine – can see rather a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick in the meantime.

Alpine is unlikely to go through as big a change to its technical department as it did ahead of 2024 – although its quest to ditch its own engine and commit to becoming a customer squad could yet trip it up again. But given the investment Williams made in updating its design processes at the cost of its 2024 car being still overweight, it has plenty of ‘free’ lap time to unlock.

So, expect points challenges to be even harder for Haas next year when it will be getting its third (full-time) rookie up to speed in Bearman. Given its historic results and smaller workforce overall, the recruitment drive isn’t going to be straightforward either.

But, in what Komatsu has achieved so far, he thinks he’s got Haas on the harmonious cycle he’d been cryptically hinting at back on that cold January day.

Komatsu focused on improving processes at Haas to polish what it already had

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

Tweaked processes and communications yielded enough gains to earn investment from Gene Haas on the understanding that it would bring a few more subsequent small improvements, attract new staff and finally make a car faster.

This is what Haas did with its Silverstone McLaren-style sidepods, reworked floor and moved wing mirror supports. Previous upgrades earlier in 2024 were of much smaller scope, but critically kept the team on its steady upward curve.

“I was really trying to get on to that positive drive by maximising what we got, being efficient, being transparent, open,” Komatsu concludes. “Because, honestly, I was convinced we can do better sportingly with everything [we had already].

“Which we are proving now, that that would get us onto that positive loop, which is happening.”

A team on the rise? What does the next chapter have in store for Haas?

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images