Haas to escape ‘survival’ state with Toyota F1 partnership

Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu has stated his squad's tie-up with Toyota Gazoo Racing will eliminate its “survival” status while working as a small F1 team.

As the newest team to establish itself on the grid, the American outfit has been operating with one of the smaller workforces across the last several seasons.

Last week, it announced a technical alliance with Toyota Gazoo Racing, with Haas now having access to its wind tunnel in Cologne.

Another benefit for Haas is commencing the testing of a previous car [TPC] programme with Toyota drivers, which Komatsu highlighted will train further personnel in the event they need to step in during a race weekend.

“This is another benefit of this technical alliance because we wanted to do it," Komatsu told media including RacingNews365. "TPC is very important in terms of training our personnel.

“As you know, we have just over 300 people, we have no contingency personnel.

“If one race engineer or one performance engineer decides to leave or is having a problem and is unable to attend the race, we are already struggling, we’re on the limit all the time then.

“To improve the organisation, you cannot be in that kind of survival stage as a baseline. We have got to build up our organisation.

“Through TPC we can start training our engineers, our mechanics, having back-up people as well.”

Haas wary of budget cap complications

TPC outings are currently conducted in cars that are at least two years old the challengers of the current F1 season.

With F1 teams bound by a strict budget cap, Komatsu highlighted Haas must consider the situation carefully when deploying its TPC strategy.

“Of course, the budget cap makes it more complicated in a way that we’re going to do it as a time sheet, so people who are dealing with heritage, i.e TPC, are outside of the cap.

“But the minute those people have to cross over to the race team beyond a certain percentage, we have to completely include them in the budget cap.

“So with that detail, we need to do it correctly. But in terms of building up our organisation, having a contingency, having the capacity, more young people, training opportunities, for me TPC is the best environment.

“So Toyota young drivers will be driving our TPC cars.”