As part of its technical alliance, Toyota will provide vital infrastructure to Haas, the smallest team on the Formula 1 grid.
Haas is by far and away the F1 team with the smallest workforce.
Whereas the likes of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull have beyond 1000 staff on the payroll, Haas has just 300 personnel at its disposal.
This limits the team’s capacity in several areas, including simulator testing and a Testing of Previous Car (TPC) programme.
However, by bringing in Toyota Gazoo Racing as an Official Technical Partner, Haas will see key improvements in this area.
“We are the smallest team on the grid,” Haas Team Principal Ayao Komatsu explained to select media including Motorsport Week.
“We are lacking certain resources and hardware capabilities to understand certain things.
“In terms of being more competitive in the midfield, we’re looking for someone to give us more resources.
“To have the hardware and know how to use that hardware – TGR gives exactly that.
“We will be able to tick off some activities, like simulator and TPC, with this collaboration.”
TPC programme will build a talent pipeline for Haas
As part of the agreement, Toyota will provide Haas with staff, drivers and engineers to run a TPC programme as well as building the tea a simulator for its Banbury site in England.
Komatsu explained the reason Haas hasn’t been able to run a consistent TPC programme is due to its limited workforce and financial constraints.
The cost-cap and staff levels have limited Haas to focusing on its race programme and Komatsu admitted that the “TPC is very important in terms of training personnel, we have just over 300 people, we have no contingency in personnel, so if let’s say one race engineer, one performance engineer decides to leave or has a program not to attend a race we are really struggling, on the limit all the time, and in order to improve the organisation you cannot be that kind of survival stage as a baseline, we’ve got to build up our organisation, so through TPC we can start training our engineers, our mechanics, having back-up people there.”
New F1 simulator benefits Haas and Toyota
Staffing and budget shortfalls have restricted Haas to using Ferrari’s simulator, which Komatsu explained is fine for pre-season, but only allows for limited usage once racing is underway.
Until now, Haas hasn’t had the capability to create its own simulator programme, but Toyota is helping with this.
“We never had a simulator on site in Banbury, ever,” Komatsu said.
“We’ve only got a very limited number of personnel.
“Trackside engineers, we’ve got what you see on the trackside and there’s not many people behind that.
“So imagine in between races doing a simulator session in Italy, I cannot ask my UK-based guys to come back from those 24 races and then spend another 10 weeks in Italy to do simulator sessions.
“Without this partnership it’s very difficult for us to have a simulator programme.
“One, we don’t have the hardware, so we need to find the hardware, we need to buy hardware, we need to install it, then it takes ages to get that simulator up and running and to get good correlation etcetera.
“TGR has expertise in the simulator, both for themselves and for their customer projects, so they have the hardware and they have the expertise, in terms of operation, in terms of cueing – all the aspects of a simulator operation.
“So, again we are going to be taking the benefit of that through this partnership.”
Building out the simulator programme for Haas is also beneficial to Toyota, with Masaya Kaji, General Manager, GR Powertrain Development Division, saying “Of course our simulator is now for WEC and customer programmes, but our simulator engineers are top level and we can supply a good service. And we can learn more, through this project, about F1.”
The mutual benefits here are plentiful and Haas is now able to level up its operations in a cost-effective and timely way thanks to the strength of Toyota.
It will take time for the benefits to show on track, but as Komatsu explained, Haas and Toyota have embarked on “a long-term partnership.”
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