Haas boss Ayao Komatsu has insisted that the team’s Formula 1 rivals’ race pace is “nothing special”, citing it must execute weekends better to beat the competition.
The American squad rebounded from a drop to last in the Constructors’ Championship last term with a points return from three of the opening five races this season.
However, Haas has been unable to add to its total during the last three rounds, while RB has accumulated 17 points in that time to move 17 points clear in sixth place.
Haas was in a position to land a positive result at Imola when Nico Hulkenberg edged out Yuki Tsunoda at the start, but an undercut saw the RB driver regain the spot.
The earlier pit stop made Hulkenberg exposed to other drivers behind later in the race, while Haas rued not pitting Kevin Magnussen earlier to utilise his fresher rubber.
But Komatsu, who took over at the helm from Guenther Steiner in January, is adamant that Haas remains in the battle despite RB’s recent improvement from updates.
“We are fighting with them, as we saw in Imola,” Komatsu told Formu1a.uno. “In qualifying they were certainly faster, but their race pace was nothing special.
“However, we must improve in the execution of the race, we must be perfect.”
Komatsu added: “After the race we saw that with Nico there were some things we could have done differently, but it’s not his fault. It was up to us to help him.
“While with Kevin if we had made the right pit at the right time, we could have fought with Tsunoda for points.”
Haas remains the smallest team on the grid when it comes to personnel, but Komatsu has denied that constitutes a glaring disadvantage in running an F1 operation.
“It’s true, a few more people would be useful, but in the end one decides, so it’s also useless to have 20 people, also because talking with everyone would then just be chaos.”
The Japanese engineer has credited the improved dialogue that takes place between the departments as one reason behind Haas’ turnaround compared to last term.
“The communication between the various departments and factories we have has improved a lot, there is much more dialogue and the procedures have improved,” he said.
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