HAAS’ TOYOTA IMPACT TIMELINE REVEAL DESPITE INITIAL ‘DIP’

Haas’ Ayao Komatsu says it could be at least a year before the effects of its collaboration with Toyota begin to be felt on track.

Towards the end of 2024, Haas announced it had signed a technical partnership with Toyota Gazoo Racing as the Japanese manufacturer’s motorsport arm began a close collaboration with the American squad.

Ayao Komatsu: Toyota collaboration will take time to be felt

In October 2024, Haas confirmed the signing of a multi-year agreement with Toyota Gazoo Racing, with the intent being for the two sides to “share expertise and knowledge, as well as resources”.

Haas and Toyota’s developing relationship will see the Japanese manufacturer offer design, technical, and manufacturing services to Haas, which will offer technical expertise and commercial benefits in return.

But Komatsu believes the relationship will actually result in a little ‘dip’ in productivity to start off, given that his team has to assign people to work on the project, and that it could take several months to find stability and start making progress together with Toyota.

Speaking at the end of the F1 2024 season, Komatsu was asked whether Toyota’s arrival had played a part in the American squad’s strong end to the season.

“How quickly do you think those things can have an impact?” he replied.

“You announcing it, do you think the next step is going to be on the car?

“No, no. That kind of collaboration takes time. At the moment, we are in the very early stages of actually setting up the project, etc.

“So it’s actually a dip because we haven’t actually increased our number of people, but we have to set up the project, right?

“So people are working more, it has nowhere near got to the stage where we can feel any benefit.

“In fact, we are even more stretched at this minute at the dip stage, which is normal, you know?

“So we just need to get out of that dip stage and get onto the stage where we can stabilise it, but that’s going to take several months.

“To feel the effect on the track, it’s going to take a year at least.”

But while Komatsu believes it may take time for Toyota’s arrival to have an impact, there are clear signs the Japanese manufacturer has already made its presence felt.

With Haas carrying out its very first TPC (Testing of Previous Cars) programme at Jerez earlier this week, TGR driver Ritomo Miyata got his chance to drive the VF-23 after Ollie Bearman and Esteban Ocon over a two-day test at the Spanish circuit.

Speaking to select media, including PlanetF1.com, at the time of the Toyota announcement, Komatsu explained how being able to run a TPC progamme will benefit the team – something it hasn’t been able to do before due to limited workforce numbers and financial constraints.

“TPC is very important in terms of training personnel, we have just over 300 people, and we have no contingency in personnel,” he said.

“So if let’s say one race engineer, one performance engineer decides to leave or has a programme not to attend a race we are really struggling, on the limit all the time, and in order to improve the organisation you cannot be that kind of survival stage as a baseline, we’ve got to build up our organisation, so through TPC we can start training our engineers, our mechanics, having back-up people there.”

Another benefit for Haas is that it will have the capacity to run its own simulator programme as Toyota will come to its aid. In recent years, Haas has used Ferrari’s simulator, but TGR’s expertise will allow for a simulator operation to begin.

“We never had a simulator on site in Banbury, ever,” Komatsu said.

“We’ve only got a very limited number of personnel.

“Trackside engineers, we’ve got what you see on the trackside and there’s not many people behind that.

“So imagine in between races doing a simulator session in Italy, I cannot ask my UK-based guys to come back from those 24 races and then spend another 10 weeks in Italy to do simulator sessions.

“Without this partnership, it’s very difficult for us to have a simulator programme.

“One, we don’t have the hardware, so we need to find the hardware, we need to buy hardware, we need to install it, then it takes ages to get that simulator up and running and to get good correlation etcetera.

“TGR has expertise in the simulator, both for themselves and for their customer projects, so they have the hardware and they have the expertise, in terms of operation, in terms of cueing – all the aspects of a simulator operation.

“So, again we are going to be taking the benefit of that through this partnership.”

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2025-01-19T14:22:45Z