Haas Formula 1 boss Ayao Komatsu has defended his choice to reduce the team’s expectations for 2024 amid recent criticism from his predecessor Guenther Steiner.
Having slumped to the bottom of the Constructors’ Championship again last season, Haas has sustained a much more encouraging opening to the current campaign.
The American outfit has scored points on three occasions – including a double score in Australia – and is embroiled in a tight battle with RB for sixth in the standings.
Komatsu, who took over the helm when Steiner’s contract was not renewed, had admitted on the eve of the season that Haas was anticipated being on the back foot.
But Komatsu has argued that he had remained cautious about Haas’ prospects because he was unsure how much potential progress its rivals would make last winter.
“I knew how much we were finding,” he told Autosport. “But I’ve got to assume everybody else is finding at least the same or more because I know how late we started.
“I know we stopped for two months to do the Austin upgrade.
“Then we are the smallest team, right? It’s not like we’ve got more advanced methodology. Now, I’m sure everybody else is as clever as anybody else, on average.
“So that’s what my baseline is. It’s not about bullshitting or putting up a smokescreen or anything. That’s my expectation of reality.”
Komatsu has explained that he dampened hopes that Haas could arrest its decline from last season to avoid personnel getting downbeat if its slump had continued.
“Internally as well, I don’t want my people to see the car Bahrain in P10, and then get depressed and get the heads down,” he added.
“Because I just wanted to make sure, ‘You guys know what you’re doing, you just didn’t have enough time to put enough performance on the car – it’s not your fault if we are P10 in Bahrain.’
“That’s the internal message I just wanted to be clear. So I needed to prepare my guys that for Bahrain, when we are last, they don’t get depressed about it.
“Then they’ve got the grounds to say, ‘Okay, this is where we’re going to start, this is where we’re going to improve.’
“So that’s more internal message if you like, but it’s not a bullshit smokescreen. Seriously, that was my expectation.”
Despite Haas spending winter testing fixated on solving its degradation troubles, Komatsu has revealed he was optimistic the team wouldn’t be isolated at the back.
“When we did pre-season testing, after day one, day two, looking at our long run pace, I thought we could fight against maybe two or three other teams,” he admitted.
“I didn’t know exactly about how much, but somewhere around P8, P7.
“But yeah, I only knew that once we started running. And also in terms of, let’s say, downforce we generate from the car – it’s very different from what wind tunnel says.
“That within itself is a problem. But part of it is a good surprise. Could I predict that, looking at the wind tunnel number? No way.”
Asked whether the downforce on the VF-24 had surpassed expectations, Komatsu replied: “I don’t particularly want to go into detail. But it’s not like that. It’s not linear.
“But certain characteristics we see on the track – it may not be great on, let’s say, in the simple number, outright number, headline number, should I say – but in terms of characteristics, it’s much more usable, so the driver can extract it.
“So if you’ve got like a peaky car, a driver can get to the limit maybe once in a while.
“But if you have got, let’s say, a benign car – okay, absolute performance is less, but nine out of ten, he can get there.
“If you look at a race over 305kms, which car do you want? Of course, you want a benign car.
“And then this year’s car may not be by design, but on certain parts of the car, we got that benign car.
“So that’s why drivers can grow confidence from it. Again, if somebody can tell that from the wind tunnel, that’s amazing.”
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