Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu says convincing Nico Hulkenberg to buy into a different approach to winter testing is behind their much-improved results in the 2024 Formula 1 season.
The American squad, which came last in 2023, is currently engaged in a close fight with RB for sixth place in the constructors’ championship, as three points separate them with the final six races of the campaign looming.
Hulkenberg has scored 54.2% of Haas’s 31 points so far – compared to 66.7% of its nine in 2023 – with the team’s impressive improvement in form long credited to is design alterations in the VF-24 compared to the VF-23, meaning its drivers can now keep their tyres alive and push on harder in races.
But while the current Haas car is a much better machine, Komatsu has now revealed how he sees the team’s gains as much down to improvements on the driver side as well.
In an exclusive interview with Autosport, Komatsu explains that he feels Hulkenberg has been “better” overall compared to the driver who restarted his career with Haas last year, but “not better in terms of giving us reference in qualifying, in terms of tyre management, race management”.
In 2023, Hulkenberg was a regular qualifying star for Haas but could not score regular points due to the team’s struggles with in-race tyre wear.
Hulkenberg has already matched his 2023 Q3 appearances total (eight) with a quarter of the season remaining, but his team boss is adamant he has been “so much better” at in-race tyre management too due to a key decision taken at the start of the year.
“It doesn't just come from him,” Komatsu added. “Just the whole team, the way that we work together from pre-season testing, involving drivers in the centre to understand how he needs to manage tyres.
“Yes, the car is better, so it's easier to manage. But from his side as well, I think his understanding is much better.
“And then because we've been focused on it from day one, I think he knows he feels how much time on tyre management will make a difference.
“So, he's much more open to, let's say, input as well. So, on that side, the long-run sustained running, I think he's better. Qualifying, I think same, but ‘same’ as in ‘very good’.”
Komatsu is referring to how Haas completed 15 long-run stints across the opening two days of Bahrain pre-season testing – with no time spent on the soft tyres conducting performance running – before both Magnussen and Hulkenberg did a full race simulation on the final day.
“We had to do that race practice – tyre management – in pre-season testing,” Komatsu says – explaining that Haas’s plan was to do this to get a full understanding on its tyre wear over longer stints.
“Last year, of course we were trying to get him to do the management, but he's not totally bought into it because he hasn't experienced how much difference it's going to make.”
When asked why this had been the case, Komatsu replied: “You’ve got to believe that it's going to have such sensitivity.
“You’re telling the driver, ‘you’ve got to, let's say, lose tenths in certain corners’. How painful is that?
“But then you've got to understand that ‘if you do this, you see the payback in a good way’. ‘If you don't do it, this is the result of it’. But unless you experience it and see on the data – feel it back to back – it's very difficult to accept it black and white.
“I don't think tyre management was ever his strength. If you look at the previous races he used to do with Renault, I don't think it was his strength and obviously these tyres are so sensitive.
“So, again, when he came back [for] 2023 in the pre-season testing, of course, we didn't have the same focus, right?
“But this winter, for me, there was no option. It's not optional. It's not conditional.
“It's just: ‘No, we've got to understand this one. We've got to get the drivers to experience it – the consequences, positive or negative – then they will buy into it.’ Then they know why they're doing what they're doing’.”
Hulkenberg also said Haas’s pre-season tyre wear work was “good” and “a lot of work also there understanding different strategies, how to manage the tyre”.
“It was, I think, a good learning experience for us,” he told Autosport. “We don't, obviously in race weekends, have a lot of practice to play around with that.
“So, it was good, but at the same time because the car and the aero characteristic was so fundamentally different that we were not in the same boat anymore as last year, it was immediately better.
“So, you know, did we have to do that much in hindsight? Maybe not.
“But anyway, it was good. And if you do low-fuel runs in testing, for me anyway, that's not very useful. I don't need it. So, I liked the way we approached that.”
Hulkenberg is set to leave Haas and join Sauber for 2025 – you can read how he views leaving the much-improved Haas to join now the worst team on the grid in the soon-to-be Audi works team in this exclusive interview in the latest Autosport magazine.
