Ayao Komatsu has been appointed as the new Team Principal of Haas’ Formula 1 team, with Guenther Steiner departing the operation.
Steiner played a key role in the foundation of Haas, which joined Formula 1 in 2016, and has been at the helm throughout its existence.
Haas, which finished as high as fifth in the 2018 standings under Steiner, has had a disappointing few years in Formula 1 and slipped to last in the 2023 championship.
It struggled for performance in races, amid high tyre degradation, and upgrade packages failed to deliver the anticipated gains – replicating a pattern from previous seasons.
Steiner and Haas have now split ahead of the 2024 season and Japan-born Komatsu, 47, will become the team’s new boss with immediate effect.
“I’d like to start by extending my thanks to Guenther Steiner for all his hard work over the past decade and I wish him well for the future,” said Team Owner Gene Haas.
“Moving forward as an organisation it was clear we need to improve our on-track performances. In appointing Ayao Komatsu as Team Principal we fundamentally have engineering at the heart of our management.
“We have had some successes, but we need to be consistent in delivering results that help us reach our wider goals as an organisation. We need to be efficient with the resources we have but improving our design and engineering capability is key to our success as a team.
“I’m looking forward to working with Ayao and fundamentally ensuring that we maximise our potential – this truly reflects my desire to compete properly in Formula 1.”
In a statement Haas outlined that Komatsu will ‘take responsibility for the team’s overall strategy, and ultimately on-track performance’ and that his brief is to ‘maximise the team’s potential through employee empowerment and structural process and efficiency.’
Komatsu has been with Haas since its inception, having joined from Lotus, initially as Chief Race Engineer before becoming Director of Engineering.
“I’m naturally very excited to have the opportunity to be Team Principal at Haas,” said Komatsu.
“Having been with the team since its track-debut back in 2016 I’m obviously passionately invested in its success in Formula 1. I’m looking forward to leading our program and the various competitive operations internally to ensure we can build a structure that produces improved on-track performances.
“We are a performance-based business. We obviously haven’t been competitive enough recently which has been a source of frustration for us all.
“We have amazing support from Gene and our various partners, and we want to mirror their enthusiasm with an improved on-track product. We have a great team of people across Kannapolis, Banbury and Maranello and together I know we can achieve the kind of results we’re capable of.”
Haas is also in the process of seeking a Europe-based Chief Operating Officer in order to manage its non-competition matters.
Haas will enter 2024 with an unchanged driver line-up of veterans Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen.
