From heading into the current Formula 1 campaign braced to be at the back of the grid, Haas has far exceeded expectations.
With back-to-back sixth placed finishes for Nico Hulkenberg having thrust it towards the front of the midfield battle and it now locked in a tight fight with RB for sixth in the constructors’ championship, the German driver himself labelled it a “hell of a comeback.”
But what is important to understand about the surprise progress of Haas this year is the fact that this is not a story of the team simply producing a better car from the off and reaping the rewards from it.
Instead, while its VF-24 is an improvement on its predecessor, the key to its uplift in form has been in the way it has managed to keep up the trajectory of its in-season development programme.
That consistent progress has made an impact because it is something that other teams have struggled to deliver. After all, this is a year where updates are now widely being characterised as ‘upgrades’ or ‘downgrades’ depending on their success.
For example, Ferrari has most recently faced some headaches with a new floor it introduced at the Spanish Grand Prix, having brought back its high-speed bouncing issues.
Aston Martin found a new package it brought to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix made its AMR24 trickier to drive on the limit, which has hampered its fight in the midfield pack.
Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal, Haas F1 Team, Gene Haas, Owner and Founder, Haas F1 Team, on the grid
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
For both teams, plotting their way out of these difficulties is made harder because the new parts have brought positives in terms of downforce, but they have triggered unintended consequences that have limited real world gains.
This phenomenon of updates not bringing everything hoped for seems to be a trend with the current cars and is one that even Haas has not been immune to. But how F1’s smallest team has managed to get on top of things so well, while its bigger budget rivals are struggling, is an intriguing matter – and one that the squad itself does not have an obvious answer to.
Haas F1 boss Ayao Komatsu says there is nothing unique his outfit is doing that others are not, but suspects it simply comes down to a new mindset that has been instilled this year.
Asked what the secret to Haas’s success was, he said: “I don’t know honestly, the only thing we can say is that we’re working together.
“Even when we are delivering new parts, like the sequence of updates after Miami, actually we didn’t deliver everything we thought we would — from the wind tunnel numbers, and CFD numbers.
“But as a team, when we had meetings [to discuss the new parts that did not deliver everything hoped for], what I was encouraged about was that nobody was denying it and fighting it. Instead, they said: ‘OK, we accept this is the case now we need to understand why.’
“Once you accept it, and everybody is working to understand it, then you can put that learning to the next upgrade. So maybe if there is a secret, that’s one of them. Everybody is working together with a transparent manner, and no blame culture.
Nico Hulkenberg, Haas VF-24
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images
“Even with this one [the British GP upgrade], I said on Thursday that until we run it, I don’t want to say anything about it because you never know. You never know beforehand what we missed, because it’s very easy to go wrong.”
This steady progress Haas has been able to make with its upgrades is in contrast to what happened at the team in the past.
Last year, a major development package brought to the United States Grand Prix did not work and its failings were exposed in Abu Dhabi when Hulkenberg, who had reverted to the old spec for the season finale, comfortably outqualified it.
Back in 2019, Haas also went through a spell where it chose to abandon a raft of upgrades it had introduced to go back to an older spec that appeared to be better.
This is why breaking this historic trend is so significant for Komatsu, and one he thinks could help unlock even more gains in the future.
“In the press, people have been saying that our aero guys cannot put an update on the car, but now we proved it [that they can] and nobody can deny we put performance on the car,” he said. “So that should give them lots of confidence.”
The underlying theme to it all though is that Komatsu feels the team is now harnessing potential that he thinks has been untapped for a while.
Nico Hulkenberg, Haas VF-24
Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images
He added: “I’ve said it from day one. We’ve got talented people, we really have, but it was just a matter of putting it together. That is a top management problem.
“Once we solved that, and let them work, then this is the result. The team is still the same size, and we haven’t changed that many people. OK, [technical director] Simone Resta’s gone but other than that, not that much change.
“The structure is changed, and we repositioned a few people, but it was really more about creating the environment. We are recruiting now, so we should be a bigger team very soon.
“But even with the same resource as last year, and more or less the same people, this is what we can do. It’s amazing, no? That’s why I’m so pleased.
“If I had made a wholesale change, and achieved this, I don’t think I’d feel as good. Because I just knew, I believed, we got good people. I felt so frustrated and bad that those people were getting a really bad press, internally and externally. So, I’m so happy for that.”