Komatsu: Before, the team wasn’t united

In The Fast and the Curious podcast, Haas F1 boss Ayo Komatsu spoke about the reasons for the team’s progress this season…

Ayo Komatsu: “To be honest, I didn’t set myself the goal of becoming a leader. But I always thought about what was holding this team back and how I could do my job better.

I worked with the team from day one and had a lot of ideas. And when Gene Haas decided he wanted to make a difference and asked if I was interested in the job, I said yes.

We only owe our progress this season to what we already have. Everyone knows that a team is only as good as the people who work on it, and we have good people.

I always believed that the team had talented specialists, but they did not act together, did not look in the same direction. When I got this job, the first thing I tried to do was make sure we worked as one.

Haas F1 is the smallest team in Formula 1. We have just over 300 people, other teams have 600 people, 900, a thousand, 1200. So if we are not united, if we don’t work as a team, we simply have no chance . But I knew we had people who could achieve much more than before. I talked to people, tried to listen and understand them. I thought about what kind of environment I could create for them, how I could help them so that each of them would achieve success in their work. That was my goal.”