Komatsu happy with Haas culture change

In brief

Komatsu happy with Haas culture change

Despite Haas scoring over double the points in the first half of the 2024 season than they did throughout last year, team principal Ayao Komatsu says he’s more pleased by the culture change he has enacted at the team.

“It’s not just the number of points, because obviously the points and the sporting results, you have to rely on the other people’s performance,” Komatsu explained in a video uploaded to the team’s YouTube channel.

“So I always focus on what we can control, which is just us as Haas F1 team – how are we going to improve the team? How are we going to improve our performance? How will we improve the way we go about racing?

“So yes, 27 points is great – it’s more than we ever had last year – but more than that, I think the very encouraging thing is how we are working together as a team. Honestly, we’ve started to work like a team now. Which wasn’t the case up until the end of last year. So for me, that’s the biggest positive and for sure that’s the good sign that we are going in the right direction.”

RB making “big boy” decisions – Ricciardo

RB driver Daniel Ricciardo says he feels his team are acting more like a senior team rather than a junior team after evolving into RB from AlphaTauri for this season and

“It does feel different,” Ricciardo said. “I think it’s easy to kind of rebrand it and say ‘we’ve got a new look’ and with this and that, but your actions have to follow.

“We’re making, kind of, big boy decisions and we’re taking risks and we’re setting targets and high targets and ones that we realistically think that we can attain. So it’s cool to see it. I’m probably too, in a way, honest in myself that if it felt like a junior team still, I wouldn’t feel comfortable here. I’m 35 now, so I think I would feel a bit out of place. And I certainly don’t. So I think that’s also a good way to probably comprehend it.”

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