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In a major development for the only American F1 team on the grid, Haas team principal Guenther Steiner is set to leave the team at the start of the year and be replaced by Ayao Kamatsu. This comes after news broke earlier in the day that senior staff member Simone Resta had resigned from the team.
The news of Steiner leaving is a huge surprise, especially because of the timing. Resta, on the other hand, has been linked with Ferrari, and his departure was put down to a disagreement with team owner Gene Haas and a lack of motivation to work with the team.
The last few seasons have not been great for the American team. In the 2023 F1 season, Haas plummeted to the bottom of the championship standing, something it had endured in 2021 as well.
What stood out for the most part was the supposed lack of understanding of the challengers the team fielded every season. Since 2019, the team has suffered with an imbalanced car that is great in qualifying but poor in races.
Guenther Steiner has been a part of the team since its inception, and it does appear that the lack of performance has come down heavily on his shoulders. The team's press release did not have comments from Steiner but team owner Gene Haas thanked him for his contribution:
“I’d like to start by extending my thanks to Guenther Steiner for all his hard work over the past decade and I wish him well for the future. Moving forward as an organization it was clear we need to improve our on-track performances. In appointing Ayao Komatsu as Team Principal we fundamentally have engineering at the heart of our management.”
He added:
“We have had some successes, but we need to be consistent in delivering results that help us reach our wider goals as an organization. We need to be efficient with the resources we have but improving our design and engineering capability is key to our success as a team. I’m looking forward to working with Ayao and fundamentally ensuring that we maximize our potential – this truly reflects my desire to compete properly in Formula 1.”
Haas to have a new team principal in Ayao Kamatsu
Haas will have a new team principal in Ayao Kamatsu, someone who has been an understudy of Guenther Steiner over the years. In the press release, Kamatsu said:
“I’m naturally very excited to have the opportunity to be Team Principal at MoneyGram Haas F1 Team. Having been with the team since its track-debut back in 2016 I’m obviously passionately invested in its success in Formula 1. I’m looking forward to leading our program and the various competitive operations internally to ensure we can build a structure that produces improved on-track performances.”
He added:
“We are a performance-based business. We obviously haven’t been competitive enough recently which has been a source of frustration for us all. We have amazing support from Gene and our various partners, and we want to mirror their enthusiasm with an improved on-track product."
"We have a great team of people across Kannapolis, Banbury, and Maranello and together I know we can achieve the kind of results we’re capable of."
It will be interesting to see what comes next for Haas as the team appears to be going through a major restructuring at the moment.
