Ayao Komatsu expands on the major idea behind the deal between Haas and Toyota, relating to TPC and simulator programme that the latter has.
When the deal between Haas and Toyota was announced on Friday, the potential speculation about the American outfit limiting ties with Ferrari and Dallara was immediately shutdown by Komatsu. The F1 team boss highlighted the co-existence topic mostly, between its different partners.
He explained where Toyota can help them in progressing as a F1 team in its technical partnership, outside of what Ferrari and Dallara are doing for the American team. The deal will run on mutual benefit scenario, where the Japanese manufacturer needs experience of top level of motor racing for its drivers and engineers.
Having left F1, the Toyota boss now feels that they are lagging behind in knowledge, which they can gain via this deal. In return, the Japanese manufacturer will provide its hardware capabilities, aiding largely on the Testing Previous Cars (TPC) programme and its state-of-art simulator.
F1 has allowed the usage of older cars by the teams if they need to give track time to its youngsters and or even their regular drivers. Several of the leading teams are already using the days, but since Haas don’t have the capacity, they couldn’t utilise it until the deal with Toyota.
The Japanese manufacturer will not just help Haas in running the cars, but get their drivers some track time too. Komatsu, though, clarifies that the Haas race team will not directly take anyone yet from the engineering pool of Toyota, but there will be personnel from both sides learning during TPC.
Another big win for Haas is taking the aide of Toyota in building its own simulator at Banbury. At the moment, they have to rely on Ferrari to use the Maranello simulator, but time is limited on that end. With TGR, they hope to use the expertise in simulator and get its own ready as soon.
TPC scene with Toyota deal –
Komatsu: “Yeah, it’s TPC. So we’re going to be, we haven’t had actually. This is another benefit of this technical alliance because we wanted to do it. TPC is very important in terms of training our personnel. As you know, we have just over 300 people, we have no contingency personnel. So, if let’s say, one race engineer or one performance engineer decides to leave or is having a problem and is not able to attend the race, we are already struggling, we’re on the limit all the time then. In order to improve the organization, you cannot be that kind of survival stage as a baseline, we got to build up our organization, so through TPC we can start training our engineers, our mechanics, having a backup people as well.
“Of course, the budget cap makes it more complicated in a way that we’re going to do it as a time sheet, so people who’s dealing with heritage i.e TPC is outside of the cap but the minute those people has to cross over to the race team beyond certain percentage, we have to completely include them in the budget cap. So that detail, we need to do it correctly but in terms of building up our organization, having a contingency, having a capacity, more young people training opportunity, for me TPC is the best environment. So again Toyota young drivers will be driving a TPC class.”
If Toyota personnel will join race team –
Komatsu: “At the moment, race team personnel, not at the moment. But again, it’s not because we don’t want to, whoever’s got the right personnel, we’ll put in the race team. You may or may not know certain senior position recruitment that the race team has been really struggling. And then if, let’s say, TGR had the personnel that fits that profile, I’d have taken him or her straight away. But at the moment, they haven’t. So we’re not taking any TGR personnel for the race team, but that’s not because that’s the philosophy. We will take whoever is the best fit for the job. And then to your TPC question, again, to do it by ourselves takes lots of investment. But again, TGR is supporting that hugely. And then they have a desire to put their young drivers in this programme to gain F1 mileage. So again, our requirement and their requirement really fits together.
“So yes, to answer your question, short, in a clear sense, if we wanted to make 20 days of TPC next year, we can. Whether we will do 20 days or not is another matter. Again, it’s got to be sustainable. We got to move in a manner that is still efficient and focused. It’s not about number of days, never. So we’re going to come up with a proper programme and scheduling, and then we’ll do whatever we are required to do. But yeah, we’d like to have a good experience for our engineers and mechanics, as well as drivers. So yeah, we will collaborate for TPC next year. Again, just to finish on the TPC, one thing I forgot to mention is to do TPC, we are employing some people as Haas F1 team personnel, but TGR will be providing some personnel as well. So it’s going to be a completely collaborative mixture effort, which is what we need.”
TPC programme, reserve driver –
Komatsu: “That’s definitely a open possibility. For instance, for next year’s reserve driver, we haven’t actually said or I haven’t actually sat down with Fred as to who should be a reserve driver. So, we should put all the drivers who, let’s say, are in consideration and are on the table and then we will discuss openly what would be the best option. But again, just to make sure, it’s clear that we’re not talking about pay driver, regardless if its Toyota driver or non-Toyota driver, we’ll always be taking the best driver for the sporting result. So our reserve driver would be the same. Yeah, we haven’t made any decisions, but we’re not ruling anything out either, it’s really based on the competence of the drivers.”
Simulator situation –
Komatsu: “So simulator, we never had a simulator on-site in Banbury ever, so only simulator we had access to was a Ferrari simulator in Maranello and then yes we have been using it, but being only using it not in anger if you like. We use it for pre-season during the season, what we can do, in Maranello simulator is pretty limited and also if you just link back to what I said earlier in terms of our personnel resource, we only got a very limited number of personnel like track side engineers, we got what you see on the track side and there’s not many people behind right, so imagine in between races to the simulator session in Italy, I cannot ask my UK based guys to come back from those 24 races and then spend another, I don’t know 10 weeks in Italy, to the simulator session. So, that kind of a location issue really prevented us to do something more but at the same time, obviously, the Maranello simulator is a very good simulator, so we keep using it in the way that we’ve been using.
“For instance, we’ve been using it for correlation and wind tunnel development, so we keep using it in that way but in terms of working with race drivers, in terms of working for teamwork, another benefit of simulator is really a teamwork, not necessarily just talking about how we’re going to approach a weekend in terms of set-up etc, yes that’s all part of it, but bigger part is the teamwork for driver, race engineer, performance engineer, which is, of course, the key when you’ve got new drivers. I’m not saying that we can get our new simulator in Banbury up and running at the start of next year, no, that’s not going to happen. That timeline needs to be defined now that we signed a contract with TGR and then we make an announcement but again these programmes are complementary to each other, especially one of our next year drivers is a Ferrari driver, so again Olli’s been driving Maranello simulator for our aero development as well.
“So to keep some consistency there with Olli keeping what he’s been doing, but Olli’s going to drive the simulator in Banbury as well and of course Esteban’s going to drive simulator in Banbury once it’s up and running. So it really adds value if you like, as you can see, it’s not taking away from what we do in Maranello but it’s actually doing it in Banbury as well, it just adds value to what we’re doing already and then bring a new dimension. Again, if I can answer that question with let’s say one specific example, just to be clear for like simulator programme, without this partnership, it’s very difficult for us to have a simulator programme, one we don’t have a hardware, so we need to find the hardware, we need to buy hardware, we need to install it. Then it takes ages to get the simulator up and running, to get good correlation, etc. TGR has expertise in the simulator, both for themselves and for their customer projects, so they have hardware and they have the expertise, in terms of operation, in terms of queuing, we need all the aspects of a simulator operation, so again we are going to be taking benefit of that through this partnership.
“That’s like, I don’t know, it’s…I don’t want to say completely wrong number, but just for argument’s sake, it’s like adding up 20 more people and then invest on the equipment, capex and then installing it and then train people, etc, so if we do that by ourselves, one we need to find money to do that, two we need to then hire people, we need to find the hardware, all that takes time, so before you get anything up and running, probably, it’s going to be like a year or a year and a half, whereas with this technical partnership, they already have an existing hardware, they have a very good understanding, we can, let’s say, help the team grow with help of TGR with this collaboration and tap into the expertise straight away and at the same time what’s there for…again I’ll cut this and speak in a minute…those TGR guys, who’s been doing simulator will then get exposed to F1 level of, let’s say, engineering if you like preparation operation. So then that’s again for mutual benefit and also the TPC drivers, for sure, they will drive simulator right, so it’s a multi-dimensional but it’s a win-win in many areas.”
Kaji: “As Komatsu-san said, we can supply simulator service and the simulator hardware and software all the things. We can help the TPC with simulator side and yeah of course, our simulator is now for WEC and the customer programme, but our simulator engineer is top level and we can supply good service and we can learn more through this project about F1.”
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