Winless Guenther Steiner Out as Haas F1 Team Principal

• Guenther Steiner, 58, led the Haas F1 team since its inception and its first race in 2016.

• The team is coming off its second last-place finish in the past three years in the F1 Constructors’ Championship.

• Ayao Komatsu, 47, has been with Haas since the 2016 debut season, most recently serving as director of engineering.

Guenther Steiner, the first and only team principal in Haas F1 Team history, is out.

The team announced today that Steiner was being replaced as team principal of the Formula 1 race team by Ayao Komatsu, effective immediately,

Steiner, 58, led the Haas F1 team since its inception and its first race in 2016. While Steiner became a popular figure in the paddock and in front of the cameras, he wasn’t able to turn Haas into a competitive team in Formula 1.

The team is coming off its second last-place finish in the past three years in the F1 Constructors' Championship. Since a modestly successful 2018 season in which the team finished fifth in the championship, the team has failed to finish any better than eighth in the 10-team championship.

Komatsu, 47, has been with Haas since the 2016 debut season, starting as a chief race engineer and most recently serving as director of engineering. Previous to his run at Haas, Komatsu worked at Renault.

Komatsu’s new role will be all encompassing, and include team strategy and overseeing on-track performance.

The team is expected to add a European-based chief operating officer to manage the non-competition side of the operation. That person is expected to be based at the MoneyGram Haas F1 Team’s Banbury headquarters.

“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,” said Gene Haas, team owner at MoneyGram Haas F1 Team. “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.”

Komatsu inherits a team who has yet to reach so much as a single podium in its eight-year race history. Its current drivers—Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen—have yet to prove they are capable of winning in Formula 1 and are near the top of the all-time F1 record for most race starts without a victory.

Hulkenberg is winless in 203 career starts, while Magnussen is winless in 163 F1 races. Hulkenberg is second all-time in the dubious category to Andrea de Cesaris, who finished his career (1980-94) with 208 winless starts.

The team has tried different driver combinations in its eight years with little success. Determined to be competitive out of the blocks, Haas fielded F1 veterans Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez in Year 1. The team hoped to catch lightning in a bottle in 2021 when it brought in a pair of rookies—Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin—only to produce the only scoreless season in team history.