Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu says the Toyota deal won’t immediately help the team: some things have to fall into place first.
How quickly will the Toyota deal move the Haas team forward in the Formula 1 field? Team boss Ayao Komatsu is putting the brakes on euphoria, saying that the benefits of the partnership with the Japanese manufacturer will not be immediately apparent.
“As with any other partnership, we need to understand each other and then we need to try a few things,” he says, urging patience.
Among other things, Toyota is to help Haas with the development and construction of some parts of the car, but Komatsu believes that this too will take some time to get right: “We need a few attempts to understand how long it will take and what kind of quality information exchange will be possible,” he says.
“We have to learn about each other, and that’s just the outer layer,” he emphasizes.
The new simulator that they want to set up at the factory in Banbury won’t be available overnight either. Komatsu had already indicated that it would not be ready in time for the start of the next season.
Although there is a clear idea of when the simulator should be installed, “but once you’ve installed it, the correlation takes a little more time,” says the Japanese driver.
Simulator with Toyota faster
“I’m not dreaming that it will make us instantly faster, because that’s not going to happen,” he clarifies. ‘But it is faster anyway. Even if we could do it ourselves and had the money to do it, it would certainly be a lot faster if we did it through this technical partnership because they already have the know-how and the people.’
“If we have to recruit people, then a year is almost up, right? So even if we have found the hardware, we might be able to procure the hardware in a few months, but we still have to recruit people. Then we have to train them in the environment and then understand the hardware,” he explains.
But with Toyota, you can skip these stages: Toyota already has the personnel and uses simulators in several locations. This means that Haas can get started quite quickly.
Komatsu warns: don’t rush it!
Komatsu says he looked for ways to get Haas to the front as quickly as possible. He ended up with Toyota and made a deal with them that helps both sides. “That’s how I saw it,” he says.
“But like everything, it’s going to take time, and if you want too much too fast, it all comes crashing down, so we can’t rush anything, even if it is Formula 1 and thus a race,“ said the team boss.
”So we’ll do everything as quickly as possible, but it’s a fine line, so we have to get it right.”