Haas tackles its biggest weakness – and creates a first for F1

Twelve months ago, Ayao Komatsu was pessimistic when discussing Haas’ expectations for the 2024 season. He predicted the team would be the slowest on the grid at the start of the year, and was not in a position to openly admit he had set the team a target of eighth in the constructors’ championship simply to have something to aim for.

Asked this week how different expectations and targets are now, and the Haas team principal laughs as he reflects on the contrast.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t significant areas of the team Komatsu wants to address. In fact, he’s been hard at work restructuring the trackside organization at Haas and bringing in new personnel over the winter, with one in particular sure to make headlines.

While Ronan O’Hare will look after Oliver Bearman, Laura Mueller will be Esteban Ocon’s race engineer, becoming the first full-time female race engineer in modern Formula 1. Not that the ‘female’ part of that sentence is something Komatsu gave any time to.

“If you look at how many female engineers we have in the office, it’s definitely more than before,” Komatsu says. “But it’s not like I chose Laura because she’s female. We don’t care about nationality, gender – it really doesn’t matter. because what matters is work.

“How you can fit into the team? How you can maximize the performance? And Laura and Ronan happened to be the right people. I believe it is the right choice.”

Mueller has risen through the ranks at Haas, her first F1 team, where she started off as a simulator engineer and then became one of the team’s performance engineers. With both of the new race engineers being relatively inexperienced, the addition of a new chief race engineer in the form of Francesco Nenci – who includes Toyota and Sauber among his previous teams – is seen as particularly crucial to adding further strength to the set-up.

“They have both got good potential and good determination,” Komatsu says. “So we decided to promote internally, because that sends a good message for everyone as well – that rather than going for some big names of experience from outside, promote. Somebody may not have enough experience to start off with, but good potential, good work ethic, good communication… just support each other; help.

“In terms of experience, it’s not a huge amount of experience. So that’s where we really need to work as a team. And then it’s great having Francesco. He’s the one having lots of experience coming in as a chief race engineer.”

With new head of strategy Carine Cridelich coming in from RB in March, and Mark Lowe returning to the team in the new sporting director role – a development that included former team manager Pete Crolla leaving – there has been a significant overhaul of personnel that work hands-on at track.

“What’s been the change is the trackside team,” he says. “It’s a huge change, but I felt that’s one of the weakest areas last year. And then the more and more the car became competitive, kind of that exposed it more, if you like.

“Then also the mentality as well, in terms of mindset… When you’re fighting, when you have got the car – towards the end of the season, we had the fifth-fastest car – some races like Abu Dhabi was amazing as well, but in terms of execution… we left too many points on the table, from the trackside operation. So really needed to step up on that one.”

The changes were cemented by what Komatsu believes were missed opportunities throughout 2024, coming as early as the first race in Bahrain. Although he acknowledges it was tough to have an impact without adding a chief race engineer or moving on from former race engineers Mark Slade and Gary Gannon, Komatsu also believes a lack of training opportunities played a part, and points to the team’s new testing of previous car (TPC) program as another key development.

Mueller, O’Hare and Nenci were all picking up their roles at Jerez last week as Ocon and Bearman tested the 2023 car, and were able to lay the foundations for their relationships in lower-pressure surroundings than an official pre-season test or race weekend. That the program was up and running just two weeks into the new year shows how much Komatsu wanted to prioritize that aspect of Haas.

The technical team designing the 2025 Haas car – which will run for the first time at Silverstone on February 16 – remains unchanged, as Komatsu believes the likes of technical director Andrea de Sordo, head of aero Davide Paganelli, chief designer Tom Coupland and deputy Jonathan Heal did a “fantastic job” last year. But that came about after focusing on the Maranello-based team first, and knowing the short-term pain of revamping the trackside set-up would need to wait.

“The thing is 12 months ago I had to focus on priority AAA, number one. But even one or two things in priority A – which is the technical side, Andrea’s side, Davide, Tom, Jonathan – we had to really make the organization, and make sure that all the real car feedback is going through the technical office and wind tunnel so that we can develop the car correctly. So that I couldn’t delay a second. I had to really go for that one. I was really focused on that.

“Then lots of other areas that we changed , I knew it’s less than ideal, but I cannot change too many things because we’re such a small team with no margin. We’re going to just disintegrate. So I really had to be brutal in terms of, ‘OK, I know these things are not great, but I really need to ignore it until such stage that we can deal with it as a team’.

“And then in my mind – I never said this to anyone back then – it was, ‘We’re going to do this trackside team for a year and then we’ll revamp’. So it’s the right timing, but it still doesn’t change the fact that it’s going to be a huge challenge for us.”

So where does all of that leave Komatsu’s targets for Haas heading into 2025? Despite the initial telling laugh, it’s very much a focus on more of the same.

“Sights (are) set on consistency,” he says. “We finished P7 last year. In the history of Haas, across the years, I don’t think we’ve been competitive across seasons in a similar manner.

“What was encouraging last year was our competitiveness increased through the season. Then we scored the most points in the last quarter of the year. Since Monza, we only missed a point in Brazil. That was encouraging.

“I’d like to continue that level of consistency. But I only expect competition to be tighter this year, Alpine, Williams, Sauber and RB – they are all going to be better as well. So, I don’t know how packed the midfield will be, but I expect it to be tight.”