JANUARY 22, 2025

Komatsu announces big changes at Haas

Haas Team Principal Ayao Komatsu has announced big changes in his team, particularly in the structure of the race team. As it was anticipated, Esteban Ocon will be working closely with Laura Mueller, who will become Formula 1’s first female Race Engineer, but there are other changes in the team, as veteran Francesco Nenci returns to Formula 1 after ten years in other categories of motor racing.

The former Toyota, Sauber and Marussia man has taken over the role of Chief Race Engineer and will bring valuable support for Mueller in her new role, as she steps up after a couple of years as Performance Engineer for the American team.

In fact, both cars will have new Race Engineers, as former performance engineer Ronan O’Hare will be working directly with rookie Oliver Bearman, after Mark Slade and Gary Gannon left the team at the end of last year.

Another chance will come in the strategy group, as former AlphaTauri strategist Carine Cridelich joins Haas immediately after the Bahrain test, as Head of Strategy. And, finally, Mark Lowe, who was previously team manager at Haas, rejoins as sporting director, replacing Peter Crolla, who has left the team.

Speaking to a restricted number of journalists, Komatsu made it clear that Mueller’s promotion was based on her qualities alone and had nothing to do with a PR-inspired move for gender equality. The Japanes engineer explained that, “she's very hardworking, and her work ethic is really, really good. So, she's going to be Esteban's race engineer.” He then added that, “she's a pretty determined character and in terms of looking at it, personality-wise, Esteban is a pretty determined character as well. SoI think that personality matches pretty well.”

Komatsu admitted that, “if you look at how many female engineers we have in the office, it's definitely more than before, but it's not like I chose Laura because she's female. We don't care about nationality, gender, it really doesn't matter because what matters is work. How you can fit into the team, how you can maximise the performance.”

Explaining all the changes he’s implementing in the race team for this year, the Haas Team Principal admitted that, “I felt it was one of the weakest areas last year. The more the car became competitive, it kind of exposed it more, if you like. In terms of race execution, we should have finished P6, but we didn't. Part of it was we left too many points on the table from the trackside operation. So, we really needed to step up on that one. There were so many times that under pressure we don't seem to function as well as we should do. But it's not just about the people, it is also the amount of training we can give."

Komatsu also revealed that, the new VF-25 will make its track debut on February 16th, with a filming day in Silverstone, before the team will join its competitors in London, for the general livery reveal Formula 1 is trying this year. The second filming day will already be held in Bahrain, a couple of days before the start of the pre-season test and while it will be Ocon in action in the first track test, Bearman will run his 200 kilometers in Bahrain, in more representative weather conditions.