Haas driver Kevin Magnussen said no “unrealistic optimism” should be had with the new team leadership.
The 2024 season will see a new team principal for the American squad, after owner Gene Haas removed previous boss Guenther Steiner who was out of contract, promoting Ayao Komatsu from his trackside engineering role.
Haas had argued that Steiner was a ‘people’s leader’ but that the team needed someone with more technical knowledge if they wanted to be competitive in the Formula 1 grid.
Speaking about the new leadership, Magnussen said he is managing his expectations “quite well” going into the season.
“I think in some years there has been some unrealistic optimism going into the seasons and I’ve been affected by it as well,” he said ahead of pre-season testing.
“Certainly, Ayao is very clear that he doesn’t think we’ve moved out of last year’s position yet but he’s clear in that he sees the development trajectory looking a lot stronger, so he’s actually optimistic that we can move forward through this year.”
Magnussen said the team “ran into a wall in terms of development” last year, losing all hopes of improving against their competition.
“We couldn’t really break that barrier until we shifted the concept, and this year is looking a lot better,” he added. “Expectations are low to begin with but high for the season as a whole.”
A big change
Magnussen said that Komatsu’s move into the team principal roles has been “a big change in our team, of course.”
“I have a good relationship with Ayao [Komatsu]. He’s been with the team for eight years, since the beginning in 2016, so I’ve worked very closely with him ever since I came to Haas in 2017.
“Ayao is an engineer, and he has a reasonable amount of engineering experience with a Formula 1 team, and getting into that mindset at the helm of the team is going to be very interesting. I think it’s going to change the dynamic and communication across the whole organisation.”
