What Ayao Komatsu told Haas staff after replacing Guenther Steiner that inspired fantastic 2024 upgrades

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Haas are enjoying a revolutionary season in Formula 1 after finishing bottom of the Constructors’ Championship in 2023.

After joining the grid in 2016, the team’s best finish in the team standings is 5^th in 2018 with Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen regularly in the points.

However, signing two rookies in 2021 – Nikita Mazepin and Mick Schumacher – proved to be a poor decision with the team failing to score a point that year.

They’ve slowly recovered from that campaign, but former team principal Guenther Steiner was told that his contract wouldn’t be renewed at the beginning of 2024.

Steiner and Haas were interchangeable in the minds of many F1 fans and his fame through Drive to Survive was seen by many F1 fans as one of the only reasons to support the team.

Ayao Komatsu was named as Steiner’s replacement and his engineering background appears to have given Haas the boost they needed.

The team already have 15 more points than last year and sit 7^th in the championship with RB in their sights.

Speaking to RacingNews365, Komatsu has explained what he told Haas staff after Steiner left the team.

A change of approach was needed at their Banbury factory and without making wholesale changes to the team’s staff, Haas have taken several big steps forward.

While Steiner can’t be blamed completely for that underperformance, Komatsu appears to have found a way to extract much more performance out of his staff.

READ MORE: Everything you need to know about Haas F1 Team from team principal to Ferrari relationship

What Ayao Komatsu told Haas staff after taking over from Guenther Steiner

Speaking about taking over the team at the beginning of the year, Komatsu said: “Those people who stuck with us, I said it straight away in January [when he took over as team principal], ‘I believe people [here] are good, and my job is to give you that environment [and] listen to you’.

“‘Tell me what you need, I’ll try to provide you with that environment. I’m not going to tell you how to develop the car, because I don’t know – you guys are the experts’.

“And then they proved it. I’m just so happy they’ve now got the plaudits they deserve.”

READ MORE: Haas driver Kevin Magnussen’s life outside F1 from wife and daughters to net worth

Magnussen agreed with Komatsu’s assessment that the team deserve credit for their work this year and said, via the Formula 1 website: “The second half I think, with the couple of upgrades we’ve had this year, they’ve actually worked, and it’s the first time in Haas’s history that we brought upgrades to the car that made it faster!”

READ MORE: Haas driver Nico Hulkenberg’s life outside F1 from wife to height

Big changes are coming at Haas with new driver pairing for 2025

While Nico Hulkenberg in particular and Magnussen have benefitted from Haas’s upturn in form this year, the team are currently the one outfit on the grid heading into 2025 with a completely new driver line-up.

Ferrari junior Oliver Bearman will join race winner Esteban Ocon at Haas next year to get a season under their belts before the 2026 rule changes come into play.

It looks very unlikely that Magnussen will find a way to stay on the grid away from Haas, while Hulkenberg is the only driver currently signed up for Sauber’s final season before they become Audi.

Hulkenberg might be wondering whether he’s made the right call given Sauber’s pointless season up to this point.

However, the chance to drive for a works team – no matter how well Haas are doing this year – is something the German can’t turn down at this stage in his career.