Haas ended last season at the bottom of the championship standings. It has raised its game this year and now lies seventh, just three points off RB.
However Ayao Komatsu, who took over as team principal at the start of the year, said the team needs the boost offered by its new partnership with Toyota to continue competing at this level.
“We are the smallest team on the grid and we are lacking certain resources and hardware capability to understand certain things,” he told media including RaceFans after the deal was announced today.
“In terms of being more competitive in the midfield, we are looking for somebody who can give us more resource and [manpower] and also have the hardware and the know-how to use that hardware,” he explained.
“Toyota Gazoo Racing gives exactly that. They have a great facility in Cologne so we’ll be able to utilise that.”
Haas will collaborate with the former F1 team on developing a new simulator and running a programme for the testing of previous cars, which will be driven by Toyota junior drivers and operated by Haas staff.
“They are looking for that latest F1 know-how and skillset which we have,” said Komatsu. “We don’t have their facilities, we don’t have the number of people, their resource.
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“So that’s how we are tapping into each other’s expertise and then learning in the areas that we are weak relative to each other. So it’s really a perfect combination to have the mutual benefit.”
One key benefit Haas was able to offer Toyota was the opportunity to run its junior drivers by taking advantage of F1’s Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) rules as other teams do. This will also help Haas develop its F1 personnel.
“TPC is very important in terms of training our personnel,” Komatsu explained. “We have just over 300 people, we have no contingency in personnel. So if one race engineer or one performance engineer decides to leave or is having a problem and not able to attend a race, we are really struggling. We’re on the limit all the time.
“In order to improve the organisation you cannot be at the kind of survival stage as a baseline. We’ve got to build up the organisation. So through TPC we can start training our engineers, our mechanics, having back-up people.
“Of course the budget cap makes it more complicated in a way that we’ve got to do it on a timesheet. People who are dealing with heritage, i.e. TPC, is outside the cap. But the minute those people cross over to the race team beyond a certain percentage we have to include them in the budget cap. So that detail we need to do correctly.
“But in terms of building up the organisation, having a contingency, having the capacity, more younger people, training opportunities, for me TPC is the best environment.”
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Komatsu stressed the Toyota deal will work alongside its current arrangement with Ferrari, which supplies its power units, gearboxes and other parts.
“Our partnership with Toyota is not to replace the Ferrari partnership,” he said. “The Ferrari-Haas partnership is the foundation and it’s always going to be the foundation. This partnership is not to take away from it, but actually enhance that fundamental partnership with Ferrari.
“We’ve been completely transparent with the Ferrari management, of course, from the early stage of this discussion, so we both have a clear understanding of what engagement we have in which areas with TGR and how we need to protect the IP [intellectual property] of each company.”
Haas also relies on Dallara for the design and production of other car parts. Some aspects of this may change as Haas begins to work more closely with TGR, but again Komatsu said they intend to remain Dallara customers.
“Dallara is an important partner, they’ve been with us, building our chassis, from day one. So that’s another key, important relationship.
“In due course we’ll be discussing which parameters we keep working with Dallara, which parameters we’re going to work with Toyota. But we will coexist, it’s not to replace one another.”
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Exactly how that part of the arrangement will work hasn’t been fully defined yet, Komatsu acknowledged. “Of course we will keep the Maranello design office, because again, nothing changes the fact that we are going to be buying our gearbox and suspension from Ferrari. So to that extent it makes sense to have our DO in Maranello and also, like I said, we continue to use Ferrari’s wind tunnel so our aerodynamicists will continue to be based there.
“But for instance, we will start designing some other carbon composite parts by ourselves and then also start doing some testing and then simulator work in some other areas that contribute for the performance of the car. Where we house them exactly, whether it’s in Maranello or UK, is something we need to define in the future.”
Haas already relies on Ferrari’s simulator for car development. It now plans to build its own on-site simulator in Banbury which will allow it to sharpen the interactions between drivers, race engineers and performance engineers, and area where it currently lags behind rival teams.
“We’ve never had a simulator on-site in Banbury, ever,” Komatsu explained. “The only simulator we had access to was the Ferrari simulator in Maranello.
“Yes, we have been using it, but only using it not ‘in anger’, if you like. We use it for pre-season, during the season, what we can do in the Maranello simulator is pretty limited.
“Also, if you just think back to what I said earlier in terms of our personnel resource, we’ve only got a very limited number of personnel. Trackside engineers, we’ve got what you see on the trackside and there’s not many people behind.
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“So imagine in between races, to do a simulator session in Italy, I can’t ask my UK-based guys to come back from those 24 races and then spend another 10 weeks in Italy to do simulator sessions. So that kind of location issue really prevented us to do something more.”
Haas already has one of the more complex structures of any team. However Komatsu believes introducing a further company in addition to Ferrari and Dallara shouldn’t make the arrangement significantly more complicated.
“We buy components from Ferrari, we buy components from Dallara. For instance, if we buy a front wing from Dallara, there’ll be a price, in the same way – okay, this is done with sponsorship – but if we ask TGR to make a front wing, there will be an exchange in terms of PO [purchase order].
“So we will be paying for that front wing, but that will come out of this sponsorship money. Whereas [getting] a front wing from Dallara, Mr Haas needs to pay. So the source of money is different but the mechanism itself is very fundamentally the same. So I don’t think that will be very complicated.”
The news inevitably prompted speculation Toyota might consider expanding its presence in F1, where it competed as a works team from 2002 to 2009. While that seems unlikely for the time being, Komatsu says there is scope for the two companies to expand their partnership in future.
“It is actually a long-term partnership, this one, this is not a short-term thing,” he said. “Certain projects we picked to start off with the kick off because it’s so obvious what area we are lacking, what area we haven’t got the capability, what area TGR has already got capability. So we obviously are picking up the project that has the biggest impact and need straightaway.
“But I think throughout this partnership we’ll understand each other more and more and there will be many areas we can work together on and TGR can help make us a more competitive Formula 1 team. So it’s really on a teams’ requirement basis if you like, to make us more competitive as an F1 team to move up more towards the front of the grid.”
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