Haas F1’s Next Challenge: Turning Budget Into Performance

Haas F1 Budget Secured Efficiency Still a Work in Progress

Haas F1 now operates at the budget cap but lacks efficiency, facing key decisions on resource allocation to maximize performance gains.

Haas F1 still needs to improve its efficiency to become more competitive.

That’s the admission of Ayao Komatsu, Haas F1’s team principal, who took charge nearly 15 months ago.

The small American team had an unusual pre-season test in Bahrain, opting against performance runs and instead running with high fuel loads. Similar to 2024—but back then, the team was addressing tire degradation issues. Why the same approach this year?

“We didn’t need to because our new car retained the good qualities of the old one. Trying to set a faster lap time was pointless.”

“What does it matter to me today whether we are fifth or eighth? I can’t change anything before Melbourne because we won’t have new parts before then.”

A major change for Haas in 2025, however, is that the team will be operating at the actual budget cap for the first time.

“We know where we want to spend the extra money, but we need to learn how to do it.”

“We will have 350 employees and reach the budget cap. But that’s not efficient. Other teams have 900 employees and still stay within the limit.”

“We still need to learn how to spend our money efficiently—for example, how many parts should we buy at a fixed price from Ferrari, and how many should we produce ourselves?”

This lack of efficiency prevented Haas F1 from adopting Ferrari’s new pull-rod front suspension instead of push-rods.

“The price to pay would have been receiving Ferrari’s data for the front end very late—too late for the current size of our team.”

“We would have then lost too much time in aerodynamic development. The final outcome would have been a disadvantage for us. That’s why we need to learn how to handle this with our new resources.”

He said it was a completely different story for the rear end.

“The rear (from Ferrari) is a big advantage for the car. It was obvious that we would buy it from Ferrari. And there’s no major layout change compared to 2024.”

As a result of Haas’s choices for 2025, the car is now visually very different from Ferrari’s base concept, including the nose, front wing, sidepods, and cooling layout.