Komatsu: Court payments took longer than expected

One of the big news items at the start of the race weekend in Zandvoort concerns the Haas team, whose assets were described by Dutch bailiffs in a lawsuit filed by Uralkali. How this story will end is not yet entirely clear, but Ayo Komatsu, the team principal, made it clear that they are taking all necessary measures to avoid the most unpleasant consequences.

Question: Can you comment on how the situation with Uralkali and the decision of the arbitration court is developing?
Ayo Komatsu: Of course, the arbitration court has made a decision and we have accepted it. We do not dispute it at all. But this is followed by a complex process of transferring money, we do it, but the payments have taken longer than I would like. But we are paying maximum attention to this to get everything done as soon as possible.

Q: Let’s talk about racing stuff: how are you preparing for the remaining ten stages of the season? Does your car have any additional potential?
Ayo Komatsu: This is quite difficult to judge. Of course, we didn’t score any points in the two previous races. In Budapest, for example, our results varied from Friday to Sunday. And in Spa, I expected us to be more competitive than we actually were.

In previous years we could predict more accurately at what level we would finish in each race. But this year I honestly realized that it is more difficult to do it. Therefore, it is difficult to say exactly what we can achieve in the next races. But we will focus on preparing for each of them, continue to introduce new components and try to achieve the best possible results.

Q: What does this require at Zandvoort? You were fast in Austria, at Silverstone – can you repeat this to some extent at the Dutch circuit?
Ayo Komatsu: I think we can do that. Our weaknesses are in medium-speed corners, but it’s not just about the speed range in certain types of corners, but also the duration of the corners. I think that’s been confirmed in practice, but I think we’ve started the weekend well, even if we’re not completely happy with the balance of the car.

We have to keep working on that, but we have also brought a number of technical innovations to Zandvoort and are now trying to understand them in order to get the most out of them.