Guenther Steiner is out as team principal of Haas F1 and has been replaced by Ayao Komatsu, the North Carolina-based team’s director of engineering.
The team announced the change on Wednesday. Additionally, technical director Simone Resta has left the Formula 1 team ahead of the 2024 season, according to a report by Motorsport.com.
Steiner had been in charge of the Haas team for its entire F1 history, starting in 2016. According to F1, only Red Bull’s Christian Horner and Mercedes’ Toto Wolff have served longer stints as a team principal.
“I’d like to start by extending my thanks to Guenther Steiner for all his hard work over the past decade and I wish him well for the future,” team owner Gene Haas said in a statement posted to social media. “Moving forward as an organization, it was clear we need to improve our on-track performances. In appointing Ayao Komatsu as Team Principal we fundamentally have engineering at the heart of our management.”
Steiner, a 58-year-old Italian, developed a following during his star turn in the “Drive To Survive” series on Netflix.
Haas is coming off a tough 2023 season, finishing last in the constructors’ championship. Drivers Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg often showed speed during qualifying sessions, only to be undone with tire degradation issues come race day.
It will be up to Komatsu, 47, to fix those issues.
The organization said Wednesday that Komatsu will be in charge of on-track strategy and performance. Haas F1 intends to add a chief operating officer based in Europe to handle all non-racing administrative duties.
“I’m looking forward to leading our program and the various competitive operations internally to ensure we can build a structure that produces improved on-track performances,” said Komatsu, who has been with the team since 2016. “We are a performance-based business at the end of the day. We obviously haven’t been competitive enough recently which has been a source of frustration for us all.”
Resta, 53, joined Haas in 2021 after two separate tenures with Ferrari. It was part of an agreement between the two teams that have worked together on the technical side since 2016.
Haas introduced a technical upgrade when F1 arrived in Austin, but it failed to deliver a significant improvement and Hulkenberg opted for the previous spec package for the Las Vegas Grand Prix. According to the Motorsport.com report, the change in approach led to Resta stepping away from the team.
Hulkenberg finished 16th in the drivers standings with nine points last year, while Magnussen managed only three in finishing 19th out of 22 drivers who raced during the season.
Resta is expected to return to Ferrari or move to the Stake F1 team, according to the report. He served as Ferrari’s chief designer from 2014-18 before returning to the team in 2019 after a short tenure as Alfa Romeo’s technical director. Sauber is transitioning to Stake F1 from the Alfa Romeo brand this year.
–Field Level Media
