- Guenther Steiner, 58, led the Haas F1 team since its inception and its first race in 2016.
- The team is coming off its second last-place finish in the past three years in the F1 Constructors’ Championship.
- Ayao Komatsu, 47, has been with Haas since the 2016 debut season, most recently serving as director of engineering.
Guenther Steiner, the first and only team principal in Haas F1 Team history, is out.
The team announced today that Steiner was being replaced as team principal of the Formula 1 race team by Ayao Komatsu, effective immediately,
Steiner, 58, led the Haas F1 team since its inception and its first race in 2016. While Steiner became a popular figure in the paddock and in front of the cameras, he wasn’t able to turn Haas into a competitive team in Formula 1.
The team is coming off its second last-place finish in the past three years in the F1 Constructors’ Championship. Since a modestly successful 2018 season in which the team finished fifth in the championship, the team has failed to finish any better than eighth in the 10-team championship.
Komatsu, 47, has been with Haas since the 2016 debut season, starting as a chief race engineer and most recently serving as director of engineering. Previous to his run at Haas, Komatsu worked at Renault.
Komatsu’s new role will be all encompassing, and include team strategy and overseeing on-track performance.
The team is expected to add a European-based chief operating officer to manage the non-competition side of the operation. That person is expected to be based at the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team’s Banbury headquarters.
“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,” said Gene Haas, team owner at MoneyGram Haas F1 Team. “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.”
Komatsu inherits a team who has yet to reach so much as a single podium in its eight-year race history. Its current drivers—Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen—have yet to prove they are capable of winning in Formula 1 and are near the top of the all-time F1 record for most race starts without a victory.
Hulkenberg is winless in 203 career starts, while Magnussen is winless in 163 F1 races. Hulkenberg is second all-time in the dubious category to Andrea de Cesaris, who finished his career (1980-94) with 208 winless starts.
The team has tried different driver combinations in its eight years with little success. Determined to be competitive out of the blocks, Haas fielded F1 veterans Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez in Year 1. The team hoped to catch lightning in a bottle in 2021 when it brought in a pair of rookies—Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin—only to produce the only scoreless season in team history.
Romain Grosjean races to a fourth-place finish for Haas in Austria in 2018.
Arguably the team’s most successful run was the first two races of its first season in 2016, when Grosjean opened the campaign by finishing a surprising sixth at Melbourne and fifth the next race at Bahrain. Grosjean scored the team’s best individual finish with a fourth-place finish at Austria in 2018.
Haas F1 Team
Constructor’s Championship Results
2016: 29 points, 8th in the standings
2017: 47 points, 8th
2018: 93 points, 5th
2019: 28 points, 9th
2020: 3 points, 9th
2021: 0 points, 10th
2022: 37 points, 8th
2023: 12 points, 10th
“We have had some successes, but we need to be consistent in delivering results that help us reach our wider goals as an organization,” Haas said. “We need to be efficient with the resources we have but improving our design and engineering capability is key to our success as a team. I’m looking forward to working with Ayao and fundamentally ensuring that we maximize our potential—this truly reflects my desire to compete properly in Formula 1.”
Komatsu will be visible in the top spot at the track when preseason testing begins at Bahrain, Feb. 21-23.
“I’m naturally very excited to have the opportunity to be team principal at MoneyGram Haas F1 Team,” said Ayao Komatsu. “Having been with the team since its track-debut back in 2016 I’m obviously passionately invested in its success in Formula 1. 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.
“We are a performance-based business. We obviously haven’t been competitive enough recently which has been a source of frustration for us all. We have amazing support from Gene and our various partners, and we want to mirror their enthusiasm with an improved on-track product. We have a great team of people across Kannapolis, Banbury, and Maranello, and together I know we can achieve the kind of results we’re capable of.”
Mike Pryson covered auto racing for the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot and MLive Media Group from 1991 until joining Autoweek in 2011. He won several Michigan Associated Press and national Associated Press Sports Editors awards for auto racing coverage and was named the 2000 Michigan Auto Racing Fan Club’s Michigan Motorsports Writer of the Year. A Michigan native, Mike spent three years after college working in southwest Florida before realizing that the land of Disney and endless summer was no match for the challenge of freezing rain, potholes and long, cold winters in the Motor City.
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