Ayao Komatsu is pleased that Haas could put in some fight on a circuit like Suzuka which doesn’t suit them despite no points.
Having kept itself back in terms of expectations, Haas has done well for themselves in the first four rounds of the 2024 F1 season with two points scoring races. The biggest improvement has been its race pace and better degradation.
Even though they didn’t score points in F1 Japanese GP, Haas chief Komatsu was encouraged by how they performed at Suzuka. The Japanese stated that the circuit was one of the worst that they had pinned for 2024 and came out with some promise.
“The positive side is the circuit in a race four is the worst circuit fur us so far,” said Komatsu. “I already said we need to do four or five races to see where this car is, and then this is the worst circuit by far. And then if in the worst circuit we can do this, that’s very positive. Ultimately, as you can see, high speed downforce we haven’t got enough.
“So that’s what we need to improve. And then certain characteristics on the front axle of the car we need to improve. But obviously, this is our worst circuit. Honestly, the encouraging thing is, we could race this much on this circuit. I wasn’t expecting that. In qualifying, I was staring at… trying to get just one car into Q2 and for Nico to deliver P12 – that was amazing.
“But then it still felt that in the race, it’s going to be really tough even to stay on that position. We went backwards and we managed to recover that well. And then yeah, it was good. It was good,” summed up Komatsu, who reiterated on Suzuka showing positive signs for Haas for them to bring in some updates to better their run.
“I feel because Suzuka in terms of our strengths and weakness, this circuit really exposes the weakness of our car,” said Komatsu. “So, if we can do that at this circuit, it’s positive. And then we are trying to bring the new parts aggressively to the future races. So that should add performance to the car, that should make the whole thing better.”
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