After all, the way that Andrea Stella took to the team principal role at McLaren like a duck to water – helping steer one of the most impressive F1 comebacks in living memory – showed all that’s possible with the right engineering-led focus at the top.
Komatsu, who has until recently been Haas’s director of engineering, steps up to the top job after a lengthy career in the garage and on the pit wall for BAR, Lotus/Renault and his current employer, which he joined from the off in 2016.
The messaging from Haas’s statement outlining the team boss's move on Wednesday clearly focused on Komatsu’s engineering background as being a key direction change for the squad.
As team boss Gene Haas was quoted as saying: “In appointing Ayao Komatsu as team principal, we fundamentally have engineering at the heart of our management.”
The thought process of team owner Haas is clear, that in F1’s cost cap era and, with the current generation of complicated ground effect cars, getting more out of what the team has already got is key to moving things forward.
It is understood that this was an element that he and Steiner did not see eye to eye on, but others within the organisation, including Komatsu himself, did.
While Steiner felt that more investment was needed to move the squad forward, Haas felt the team already had everything it needed to deliver – it just needed someone to pull it all together.
Source: Autosport