Who is Ayao Komatsu? What to expect from Haas’ new F1 team boss

Along with the long-serving Steiner, Komatsu was one of the Haas' first signings ahead of their debut F1 season in 2016. He has been promoted from his former role of director of engineering. 

The 47-year-old got his F1 break as a tyre engineer for the BAR team in 2003, and remained at Brackley for two seasons. Komatsu then joined Renault in 2006, where he stayed for a 10-year-spell. 

Initially starting out as a performance engineer on Renault’s test team, Komatsu forged a path to the race team and was eventually promoted to become Vitaly Petrov’s race engineer in 2011. 

Komatsu switched to work with Romain Grosjean the following season, and the pair formed a close partnership that was later rekindled at Haas. 

Both Petrov and Grosjean scored podium finishes when working with Komatsu. 

Another promotion came in 2015 when Komatsu took over as chief race engineer at the then-Lotus squad.

The Japanese engineer would follow Grosjean to the new Haas project in 2016, where he assumed the role of trackside engineering director. 

Komatsu has cemented himself as a key and trusted member of the team and has been rewarded with the opportunity to lead Haas after a decade of service. 

What to expect from Komatsu? 

Haas hope that Komatsu’s vast engineering experience and technical nous can result in changes within the team that ultimately boost on-track results.

“We looked from within, at who had most experience,” Haas team owner Gene Haas told F1.com. “Ayao has been with the team since day one, he knows the ins and outs of it. 

“My biggest concern is when we go to Bahrain, we need to show up with a car that is ready to go. Maybe having more of a managerial-type and engineering approach, we’ll see if that has benefits.

“I think Guenther had more of a human-type approach to everything with people and the way he interacted with people, he was very good at that. Ayao is very technical, he looks at things based on statistics – this is what we’re doing bad, where can we do better. 

“It’s a different approach. We really do need something different because we weren’t really doing that well.”

Komatsu represents a very different type of character from the unfiltered Netflix star Steiner, who became one of the biggest personalities in the F1 paddock.

"Ayao is going to have to work within his means. He’s going to have to be, to put it in football terms, he’s going to have to cope with what he’s got,” Sky’s Craig Slater noted. 

“He made his name, initially at least at what was the Renault team. I think he was the main architect of that passive DRS they had in the back of the day. That was a clever device to stall the front wing when you exceeded a certain speed. 

“So he’s a man with ideas. I’m not sure he’s everyone’s cup of tea at Haas, because there will have been those who will have liked the avuncular, extrovert of Guenther Steiner. He’s a complete change from all of that.”