Haas 2024 F1 car launch: VF-24 livery revealed as new boss gives bleak prediction

“Obviously it’s been busy, but it’s been really positive,” said Komatsu, who was previously the team’s trackside engineering director. “Everyone I speak to sees this as an opportunity to improve. I think many people were feeling the same thing – not knowing where this team was going, how it’s going to improve. We need a clear target, vision and communication, and to remove certain barriers that didn’t need to be there.

“We’ve got good people, so my job is providing an environment that they can flourish in and get the best out of them. Everyone is so helpful, motivated, and positive, it’s great.”

Last year, the team struggled to understand why the 2023 VF-23 car was so slow and, after several unsuccessful upgrade attempts, went in a different direction with a major upgrade at the United States Grand Prix in Austin. That halted work on this season’s car, but was worth the short-term pain, said Komatsu.

“We had to stop resources to the VF-24 for two months”

“Creating the updated car in Austin was pretty useful,” he added. “When we split the cars and Nico went back to the previous spec while Kevin continued with the new, we could see the performance differences in varying speeds of corner. We got a lot of data from that, and that confirmed where we needed to concentrate our development for the VF-24.

“During the time it took to make the Austin-spec car, we had to stop resources to the VF-24 for two months, and that’s performance we could’ve found there… but if we hadn’t done it and then had a huge surprise come pre-season testing, it would’ve hurt us immensely.

“We have better confidence in what we’re putting out on track now. We’re all realistic that our launch car in Bahrain will not necessarily turn heads, but our concentration and focus is to work with the VF-24, understand the car, and then define the correct pathway to upgrade the car. With a better cohesion within the team to find performance, we can aim to bring upgrades relatively early on in the season.

“Out of the gates in Bahrain, I still think we’re going to be towards the back of the grid, if not last.”

“There’s much better transparency, openness, and communication. I believe we have a much better chance of upgrading the car properly this year.

“The focus is to have a good test program for Bahrain so that we come away from the test having quality data for the team to analyse and understand which direction to develop the car. This means understanding the strength and weakness of the VF-24 accurately, then put a coherent plan together to produce updates on the car, which hasn’t happened previously.

“Drivers will play a stronger role too. Last year, in terms of subjective feedback from drivers, their understanding of what the weakness of the car was clear, however, we weren’t then able to reflect that in our car development program. With the changes we made in the team, we aim to address this issue with our drivers more in the loop of development paths so that nothing gets lost”

2023: another season of trial and error

Despite hiring experience over youth in its driver line-up, Haas still struggled for any race day consistency in 2023 — despite often qualifying high up the grid.

In Miami, Magnussen benefitted from a late red flag to line up in fourth for Sunday’s Grand Prix, but ultimately dropped back to tenth by the time he reached the chequered flag. Similarly, Hülkenberg qualified second under difficult conditions in Canada — before being demoted to fifth after a post-session penalty — but finished the race in 15th.

The rest of the season told a similar story and while the rest of Haas’s midfield contenders continued to bring effective updates, Magnussen and Hülkenberg were stuck with a car which spent most of the season stuck in the past.

Ultimately the team finished at the very bottom of the constructors’ standings — just four points shy of Alfa Romeo in ninth. AlphaTauri had been the perennial back marker for the majority of the season but key updates in the later rounds helped to push it into the midfield fight and beyond — with Daniel Ricciardo even qualifying fourth and finishing seventh in Mexico City.

Meanwhile Haas failed to score a single point in the final seven races of the season.

2024: A change in concept 

Racing at the back is of little benefit to an F1 team, but it does often allow designers and developers to test new concepts on their cars.

Ahead of the 2023 United States Grand Prix, Haas did just that — with a Red Bull-inspired version of its VF-23 hitting the track for the first time at COTA. Through trial and error, the team had earlier identified several key issues surrounding the performance of its current car — which heavily suffered with some of the “worst tyre degradation on the grid” according to Magnussen.

“Next year’s car is a complete change in concept,” said team principal Steiner. “With this year’s car we couldn’t do a compete change because there is some restrictions we have got, like the radiators and side-impact structure.

“But we go in the direction as much as we could, but it’s more to learn and hopefully we get a more stable car.”

Haas 2023 driver line-up​

Kevin Magnussen	Nico Hülkenberg

• Kevin Magnussen‘s multi-year deal expires at the end of the coming season
• Nico Hülkenberg penned new one-year extension — keeping him with the team at least until the end of 2024

Key personnel

Team owner: Gene Haas

Entrepreneur Gene Haas founded his eponymous tool manufacturing company in 1983, and has since then built a hugely successful business empire.

So profitable has his venture been, that he has been able to fund not one but two motor sport teams, the Stewart Haas NASCAR squad from 2002, and the F1 outfit from 2016.

Team principal: Ayao Komatsu

Ayao Komatsu’s journey through numerous motor sport paddocks reads like something straight from a story book.

He began as a tyre engineer for British American Racing in 2003 before moving to Renault in 2006 to work as a performance engineer, where he worked with drivers such as Nelson Piquet Jr, Romain Grosjean and Vitaly Petrov.

Six years later, he became personal race engineer to both Petrov and Grosjean at Lotus — sharing a close bond with the latter as the pairing scored nine podium finishes across the 2012 and 2013 seasons.

Komatsu was then promoted to chief race engineer for 2015 — where his experience and knowledge helped the team earn a surprise podium at the 2015 Belgian Grand Prix — before moving to a newly formed Haas F1 team in 2016 alongside Grosjean.

Here, he served as the head of trackside engineering — while making fleeting appearances on Netflix’s Drive to Survive — and took over as team principal from Guenther Steiner ahead of the 2024 campaign.