Who is Ayao Komatsu? Here is the story of him in F1

The Haas Formula 1 team announced the shock departure of Team Principal Guenther Steiner this week, confirming Ayao Komatsu as his replacement.

The announcement came after Haas finished bottom of the constructors' championship in the 2023 Formula 1 championship, its second bottom place in three years after 2021. This result meant that Steiner lost his seat, a role that Italian he has held since the American company entered F1 in 2016.

With Komatsu leading the team until 2024 and beyond, it's interesting to find out who the new Haas Team Principal is and how he came to be in this role.

Who is Ayao Komatsu?

Komatsu is the new team principal at Haas, having replaced Steiner for the 2024 F1 season. The 47-year-old was born in Tokyo, but left Japan at the age of 19 to study automotive engineering at Loughborough University, UK. Komatsu then completed a PhD at Loughborough and has since remained in England in various roles in F1.

Why did you become Team Principal of Haas F1?

Komatsu became team principal of Haas F1 after Steiner's contract expired. However, friction had emerged between Steiner and team owner Gene Haas following disagreements over how to move the team forward.

Steiner was actually calling for more investment to match rivals' budgets, while Gene Haas wanted more efficient use of resources, having said he felt “embarrassed” that the team did not make the most of its partnership with Ferrari.

Haas has placed in the bottom three of the F1 standings every year since its best result of fifth place in 2018, which included a pointsless season in 2021. Although things initially improved at the start of 2022, giving kicking off the ground effect era with a points finish in three of the four championship-opening grands prix, Haas returned to the bottom of the standings in 2023.

Gene Haas then felt that the team needed something different and the job was offered to Komatsu as he “has been with the team since day one, knows the ins and outs”.

How long have you been at Haas?

Komatsu joined Haas F1 in its debut season in 2016 as technical director of the team's on-track operations, a role he held every year until becoming Team Principal for the 2024 season.

He began his motorsport career in 2003 as a tire management engineer for British American Racing, before moving to Renault in 2006. Komatsu started as a performance engineer at Renault and was promoted to the role of performance engineer in 2011. track by Vitaly Petrov.

In 2012 Komatsu became Romain Grosjean's race engineer for the Enstone team, where the two formed a successful partnership achieving nine podiums in two seasons. Komatsu was then promoted to chief race engineer at Lotus (formerly known as Renault) for 2014, until he left the French team in 2016 for Haas, which he had just founded with Grosjean.

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro

Romain Grosjean, Lotus F1, with Ayao Komatsu, Lotus race engineer.

Will Haas improve?

Haas took a very different approach when choosing its new team principal, as in many ways Komatsu is the opposite of Steiner. The 47-year-old has an engineering background, so he is a very technical person who, according to Gene Haas, “looks at things based on statistics” while Steiner took better care of the operational side of the organization, acting more like a manager attentive to the people side .

The appointment also continues a trend that has emerged recently in F1, where teams have hired Team Principals with an engineering background, as happened at McLaren with Andrea Stella and James Vowles at Williams.

It therefore remains to be seen whether this new approach will work for Haas, but it has worked for McLaren and Williams, who both improved their 2022 finishing positions in 2023, thanks in part to major investments behind the scenes. The biggest task for Komatsu is to make better use of what he has available, because Gene Haas is not going to invest more in the team, so he has to be more efficient with resources.

If Haas can close the gap on the rest of the field, then Komatsu will have done a good job. One aspect that Haas needs to improve in 2024 is race pace: the VF-23's tires overheated too quickly and drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen were on several occasions forced to manage the tires without being able to attack.

What will happen to Guenther Steiner?

It is unknown what Steiner will do after leaving Haas, as he is expected to take some time away from motor racing to decide his next moves.

Steiner is unlikely to get a team principal role elsewhere in F1, but that doesn't mean he can't go to another series, as former Caterham and Renault Team Principal Cyril Abiteboul did with Hyundai in the World Championship rally.

Photo by: FIA swimming pool

Guenther Steiner, Team Principal, Haas F1 Team, during the press conference of team representatives

However, Steiner has other business ventures: the Italian co-founded the American company FibreWorks Composites, which is a carbon composite design and manufacturing organization specializing in motorsports.

This is likely to keep him busy in the coming months, although many media and broadcasting companies may want to hire Steiner to work after his rise to stardom in Netflix's Drive to Survive.