Komatsu hopes that Haas will quickly optimise its update package for Austin
Haas Formula 1 boss Ayao Komatsu stresses that it’s important for the team to make progress with its latest update package from early in the US GP weekend.
All teams are expected to bring upgrades of varying degrees to Austin, and they face the challenge of having only FP1 in which to test them before heading straight into qualifying for the sprint event.
However under the 2024 regs after the sprint and before qualifying for the main race teams have a chance to change set-up and potentially swap between new and old parts.
Komatsu admits that if the updates don’t work as planned straight away the option is there to take them off.
“In Austin we’ve got stuff coming,” he told this writer. “So we’re focused on just making sure we get on top of that quickly.
“And then if it doesn’t work, we’ve got to be honest with ourselves and roll it back. I hope it works. I think it will work, but there’s no guarantee.
“I’m concentrating on our team, I cannot control if say Alpine is going to be suddenly competitive at one race. Like in Barcelona, we were good, but annoyingly, Alpine was even better than us. You can’t control that.”
Komatsu conceded that the team has the option to run different specs on each car in an attempt to find the optimum.
“We need to finalise the discussion,” he said. “Yes, we can, but whether we want to do that or not is another matter. If we split the cars for a sprint weekend, we get amazing data from the sprint race. So then we can make actually a very good judgment for the main race.”
Komatsu cited the points situation as a good reason to use the sprint as a test session for the Grand Prix, where potentially more is on offer to those outside the top four teams: “We’ve got to assume we cannot score points in the sprint, and in the main race, you’ve got to assume it’s only one or two points available.
“So I said to my guys three races ago it’s eight races to go, and we’ve got to be scoring one point every race. It’s good that we are there or thereabouts.”
Komatsu is confident that the team has demonstrated that it can improve the VF-24 over a weekend, citing the recent races in Azerbaijan and Singapore as examples of how that was achieved after a difficult start on Friday.
“This FP1, FP2, FP3 thing, it’s always up and down,” he said. “So it’s really trying to focus on chipping away on our side, which I think we’ve done very well in Baku, and I think we’ve done very well in Singapore as well.
“Both races neither driver was happy with the car in FP1, which has got something to say about our lack of ability to put the car competitively straight away. But the reaction from that at both events, I’m really proud of our guys.
“We weren’t very happy, but then FP1 to FP2 we made a very good step considering, because sometimes if you have a knee-jerk reaction, you can be out of sync with track evolution.
“Baku and Singapore, with street circuit evolution always high, and on top of that track temperature difference, five, six degrees, that makes a difference as well.
“So you’ve got to stay calm, and take a mature approach to chip away, so that you are still in sync with track evolution. You can get it wrong so easily. But I’m very happy that we managed to do that correctly.”
Regarding Nico Hulkenberg’s P6 in Singapore qualifying he added: “We improved the car from FP1, and then the drivers, they were better as well, because they didn’t panic from FP1 either. And then in terms of operation, Q1, Q2, Q3, from our plan with track evolution etcetera, it was perfect, and we executed exactly how we needed to execute.
“So after that qualifying session, I was so happy. It was not just the position, P6, it just proved to us that we can put that together – this is what we can achieve.”
Adam Cooper F1 