Haas Team Principal Ayao Komatsu has admitted that operating across facilities around the globe is not the ideal way to run a Formula 1 team.
Although Haas’ headquarters is situated in North Carolina, United States, the bulk of the side’s F1 work is done at its bases located in Banbury, England and Maranello, Italy.
The squad’s existence inside Italy is related to its Ferrari ties, with Haas retaining an office within the marque’s complex and also taking on several non-listed car components.
Haas’ slump to the bottom of the Constructors’ standings last term prompted owner Gene Haas to not retain long-serving team boss Guenther Steiner beyond 2023.
The American, 71, explained that he had been “embarrassed” that the team “haven’t been able to do better” through the extensive technical partnership it shares with Ferrari.
Although Komatsu, who has replaced Steiner, has conceded that starting from scratch he would not opt to have two head offices set apart, he is adamant that Haas can strive to be more competitive with its current model.
“Of course, if you’re setting up on a blank sheet of paper, you’re not going to set up an F1 team with two separate factories in the UK and Italy, but that’s how we started and that was very beneficial in ’16, ’17, ’18 to get off the ground,” he told Motorsport Magazine.
“Then of course the landscape changes, certain regulation changes happen, so the team needs to develop.
“Those kind of things we need to assess continuously. But again, if you ask me is that ideal, having a UK office here and an Italy office there? No. But is that a main constraint? No. Can we do better? Absolutely yes. So that’s what I’m focused on.
“If we get the maximum out of how we set up, and then if that becomes right, we [therefore] cannot do anything better with the way we set up [and] then we can talk about that.
“That’s my strategy, if you like. But of course you’ve got to have that, not in the back of your mind, but as a strategy medium, long-term where you might want to go. But that’s not my focus at the minute.”
Expanding further, Komatsu adds that the template – only shared by AlphaTauri and Alpine on the current grid – limits the development of personal relationships.
“Ideally, if you have no constraints, of course you put everybody in the same factory, right?” the Japanese engineer continued.
“Same with designers, when certain things break it’s so important for designers to have that part in their hand. So yeah, ideally, that’s the case, but that’s not how we’re set up, and that’s not going to change in the foreseeable future.
“So again, like I said, I try to maximise what we have got to start off with, get to the absolute limitation, and then when we get to the stage where we really cannot do anything more with this set-up, and then this is the limit, then maybe there’s a discussion point.
“But at this minute, what I found is that depending on people’s capability, it depends how you know each other, if you know somebody personally well, and then this person is let’s say, technically on a certain level, I found that actually it’s fine, mostly, to work remotely.
“But when you don’t have that personal relationship, when you don’t know the person very well, or this person’s skillset or level is just below the certain level required, then it can go from absolutely fine, to absolutely not fine.
“It’s a bit case-by-case, so you cannot say a blanket statement that the separate office doesn’t work. In certain cases I’ve seen, even with the current organisation, certain areas where it works really well, with no issues whatsoever. But in certain areas, it’s a big issue. So case-by-case.”
