Ayo Komatsu: We only have ourselves to blame

Haas F1 boss Ayo Komatsu explained the reason for the disqualification of Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen yesterday, admitting the team had made a miscalculation in developing a special version of the rear wing intended for Monaco’s city circuit .

Both Haas drivers qualified for the second part of qualifying with a 12th and 15th fastest time, but a few hours later it became clear that their cars did not meet the technical regulations.

The American team explained to the stewards what happened as follows: the rear wing is completely new and the fault is caused by the fact that they did not even have time to check it properly. However, as Komatsu emphasized, there are no excuses in such cases.

“The problem is that the approach to developing the wing was slightly different, but there was a breakdown in communication between the designers and the people who test the cars on track to make sure they meet the technical regulations,” said the Haas F1 boss. – These people did not take into account that the concept had changed, and what the final position of the moving element of the wing now became.

In all previous versions of the rear wing, the maximum distance of this element from the main plane was exactly in the middle. And they took measurements exactly at this spot. This is no excuse, regardless of how the information was exchanged, but measurements should have been taken across the entire width of the wing. And they measured only in the center, despite the fact that at the edges of the wing the distance between the elements was even greater.

If the developers had definitely explained that the wing design is slightly different from the previous versions we used, and that it needs to be controlled differently, this would have helped to avoid problems. But anyway, even without this data, the people checking the car for compliance with the regulations had to measure the wing across its entire width.

This violation has not given us any illegal advantage, not the slightest, but that is not the point. Cars must be legal. The team made a mistake and this should be a lesson for us so that such mistakes do not happen again. This morning during a meeting with the team I explained this to everyone. We have to accept responsibility for what happened, but today we have a long day ahead of us in Monaco. And we can only blame ourselves for that…’

Gunther Steiner, former director of Haas F1, joked about this. “Maybe someone would like to borrow my measuring tape?” – he wrote sarcastically on his pages on social networks.