Haas has announced the departure of Guenther Steiner from the F1 team, with Ayao Komatsu taking over as team principal.
After his service of a decade at Haas, Steiner has departed the F1 team at the onset of the 2024 season with immediate effect. The Italian will make way for Komatsu, who has been promoted to be the new team principal of the American team.
Having started as a chief race engineer to becoming the head of engineering, Komatsu will now lead Haas and look after the ‘overall strategy, and ultimately on-track performance’. He will also have the power to maximise the team’s potential.
To look after the team’s commercial side and operations off the track – which Komatsu will not be burdened with – Haas will hire an European based Chief Operating Officer in time to come. He/she will based out at the team’s Banbury facility.
“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 Gene Haas. “Moving forward as an organization 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 organization. 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 maximize our potential – this truly reflects my desire to compete properly in Formula 1.”
Meanwhile, Komatsu added: “I’m naturally very excited to have the opportunity to be Team Principal at MoneyGram Haas F1 Team. 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.”
As noted, Haas has been through a bit of a rough patch off-late. They were expected to perform well under the new regulations, but couldn’t. Even the late updates didn’t work as Steiner’s job did come under scrutiny, with the axe happening at the start of 2024. There are reports as well about technical director Simone Resta leaving Haas, but the team has not confirmed the same, even with the news of hiring Komatsu as its new team boss.
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