It was right to play down 2024 hopes, insists Komatsu

Haas boss, Ayao Komatsu insists that he was right to play down Haas’ 2024 hopes before a wheel had turned in anger.

Just days into the job, following the shock ‘departure’ of Guenther Steiner, Ayao Komatsu claimed that Haas would occupy the last row of the grid for much of the season.

It was a sensational claim as usually teams are bigging-up their chances. However, in the aftermath of Steiner’s departure, ongoing issues with tyre deg, not to mention the ineffectiveness of the massive upgrade introduced at COTA, one could understand where the former chef race engineer with Lotus – and previously Renault – was coming from.

Heading into the summer break however, the American outfit is seventh in the standings, closing on RB, largely helped by successive sixth-place finishes for Nico Hulkenberg.

Though he was aware progress had been made ahead of the new season, Komatsu denies that his previous prediction was an attempt to gaslight rivals. Indeed, he feared the progress that rivals had been making.

“Honestly, I knew how much improved over the winter we were,” he says, according to Motorsport.com. “You know how small we are, I know how late we started, I know how much time we wasted by doing the Austin upgrade. So, I had to assume people with at least the same resource or three times the resource will do at least as good a job as us because I know people are not stupid, right?

“I had to assume that you cannot count on people being 10kg overweight or totally messing up the concept,” he continues. “You cannot count on that, you’ve got to make your own result.

“It’s pretty simple,” he explains. “We are 300 people, the next smallest team there is about three times as much. We started thinking like, ‘we wasted some time, how are we going to be better, right?’ So, if I said, ‘loading out of door in Bahrain, we’re going to be P8’, either I’m stupid or arrogant, one or the other.

“Luckily for us, some other people messed it up, but I cannot count on that. When you’re doing the business, when you’re doing anything, you cannot count on other people’s mess. You’ve got to make your own fortune. That’s what I’m trying to do.”