Encouraging signs in Komatsu’s first season as Haas boss

Haas made headlines before the 2024 campaign had even started when they announced that long-time team boss Guenther Steiner would be vacating his role. In the Italian’s place came another veteran of the outfit, engineer Ayao Komatsu, who quickly moved to play down their chances and predict a difficult start. What followed was a promising year of behind-the-scenes progress, effective car upgrades and plenty of points – even if they just fell short of P6 in the standings. Here’s the team’s end of year report…

Best finish

Nico Hulkenberg – 6th in Austria and Britain

Haas soon showed that they would be fighting for more than their low-key winter targets, scoring points at three of the opening five rounds (including a double top-10 finish in Australia), before pushing through update packages that all seemed to hit the mark.

A mid-season purple patch saw Hulkenberg reach the final phase of qualifying and come home a stellar sixth at back-to-back weekends in Austria and Britain, with Magnussen’s run to eighth at the Red Bull Ring giving Haas their best combined result of the campaign.

It prompted a straightforward assessment from the Dane regarding the team’s progress, as he said: “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!”

STREETS OF LAS VEGAS, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - NOVEMBER 22: Kevin Magnussen, Haas F1 Team, and — Magnussen and Hulkenberg combined to score a healthy number of points in 2024

Qualifying head-to-head

Hulkenberg 16-6/2 Magnussen/Bearman

Hulkenberg comfortably had the measure of Magnussen over one lap in 2024, starting inside the top half of the field on 11 occasions to his team mate’s three, including that standout top-six grid slot at Silverstone and another on the streets of Singapore.

It was more of a challenge for the German when he went up against super-sub Ollie Bearman, who built on his impressive debut for Ferrari in Jeddah to out-qualify Hulkenberg on the two weekends he replaced Magnussen in Azerbaijan and Sao Paulo.

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Race head-to-head

Hulkenberg 16-5/2 Magnussen/Bearman

Hulkenberg and Magnussen’s head-to-head was almost identical when it came to races, with one knocked off the tally for their double retirement at the Monaco Grand Prix – the former’s best finish of sixth comparing to the latter’s best of seventh in Mexico.

Again, as per the qualifying section above, Hulkenberg lost out to Bearman in both full races they spent as team mates at Haas, although a late Safety Car in Baku and his disqualification for rejoining the track illegally at Interlagos somewhat skewed that statistic.

Komatsu took over the Team Principal position from Guenther Steiner during the winter

Best moment

Haas’s double points finishes in Australia, Austria and Mexico were all special – the first giving them something to celebrate after a disrupted winter, the second backing up their off-track gains and the third serving as one more moment in the sun for Magnussen before his F1 exit.

And, although the US-led team were narrowly beaten to sixth in the constructors’ standings by Alpine, who pulled off that remarkable P2 and P3 result in Brazil, they still ended the year with their highest classification (seventh) and biggest points total (58) since 2018.

Worst moment

Alongside those highs, there were some painful lows for Haas through 2024, none more so than the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, where both Hulkenberg and Magnussen were excluded from qualifying over a Drag Reduction System technical breach.

To make matters worse, the two Haas machines crashed out just a few hundred metres into the race amid a dramatic pile-up that included Red Bull’s Sergio Perez – the incident leaving Komatsu with a significant repair bill and a cost cap headache.

2024 Monaco Grand Prix: See the Lap 1 crash up close through the Monaco barriers

Going forward

Building on those pre-season comments, Komatsu admitted in the closing stages of his first campaign as team boss that he “never expected” to be in the conversation when it came to that P6 spot behind McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes and Aston Martin.

That his outfit came so close to achieving it, and still walked away with a respectable seventh, will give the Japanese engineer plenty of confidence heading into the winter, where a new, landmark partnership with automotive giants Toyota is set to step up a gear.

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Meanwhile, although Haas will be losing two experienced drivers in Sauber-bound Hulkenberg and the departing Magnussen, there are two exciting arrivals for 2025 via highly rated Ferrari-backed youngster Bearman and race winner Esteban Ocon from Alpine.

Komatsu reveals Haas are outperforming pre-season targets

All the ingredients, then, appear to be in place for Haas to continue their upward trajectory and edge toward the front of the midfield, providing the various departments in Kannapolis, Banbury, Maranello and Aichi sing from the same hymn sheet.

“[In terms of the] biggest things I’ve changed behind the scenes, I guess it’s more in the culture, communication, togetherness, just to work as a team,” said Komatsu, when I asked him about the adjustments that have been made at the organisation since he stepped into the role.

“Everything for me is focused on what can I do better to get us to work as a team, because we are such a small team, if we’re not working as a team we stand no chance. At the same time, I believe that we’ve got very good individuals, so it’s a matter of providing that environment, putting it together, and letting them flourish.”