Haas's Focus on Car Development Amid Driver Speculations

Ayao Komatsu isn’t panicking. Not yet.

While the rest of the paddock speculates about Haas’s 2027 line-up, the team principal insists his priority lies elsewhere: fixing a car that has dragged his drivers backwards and turned a bright start into a long, joyless trudge through the midfield.

“We’re not in any rush,” he said before the Dutch Grand Prix, where Haas’s weekend ended with a bruising double DNF. “We’re focused on our two drivers, Ollie and Esteban, trying to get the best out of them.”

Drivers on hold, questions piling up

On paper, the situation looks simple enough. Ollie Bearman has 18 points. Esteban Ocon has three. One looks like the future; the other looks vulnerable.

Reality is messier.

Bearman himself has already pushed back on the narrative that he has dominated Ocon, pointing to “inconsistency” between the parts on their cars. Komatsu, too, refuses to reduce the debate to a scoreboard.

“You know what they’re capable of,” he said. “Ollie has shown it repeatedly. Esteban, when he is happy with the car, you know what he can do.”

That’s why Haas are in no hurry to slam the door on anyone. Officially, neither seat is locked in for 2027. Unofficially, the paddock whispers that Bearman is more likely to stay, with names like Rafael Camara and Yuki Tsunoda hovering in the background, waiting for an opening.

Komatsu’s stance is clear: sort the car, then sort the contracts.

“We need to really just focus on providing them with the best possible car, best set-up adaptation, and get the best out of them,” he said. “And then both of our drivers are fully focused.”

From early promise to a painful slide

The frustration comes from how quickly the season turned.

Haas opened the year swinging. Bearman’s superb P5 at the Chinese Grand Prix felt like a statement that the smallest team on the grid had punched above its weight again. For a moment, it looked like Haas had stolen a march on the midfield.

Then the development race started in earnest.

Since that early surge, the team has gone six races without a point. Racing Bulls and Alpine have accelerated away. The pack Haas once fought has become the pack they now chase.

Komatsu does not sugarcoat the scale of the challenge.

“This is the biggest regulation change ever,” he said. “So us being the smallest team, we expect that we’re going to really be struggling to keep up with the other big boys in the development race.”

The early overperformance, he suggests, disguised some of the structural limits.

“We started the season extremely well, much better than anyone can think of, and then from that moment I think that’s the reality. With our constraints, we’re trying to develop the car as fast as possible, but the other guys are putting performance on the car faster than us. That’s the reality.”

No excuses, no blame – just a long road

Komatsu is protective of his staff. For him, the gap to the midfield isn’t about effort; it’s about scale.

“To be fair, honestly, it’s nothing against the guys in the team – they’re doing a fantastic job, they’re working together,” he said. “For us to have a chance to keep up with the other guys, everything has to be perfect, right? Everything. In life, that’s not something you can ask for all the time.”

So Haas have gone back to basics.

They have stripped down the problem: where the car lacks downforce, why the drivability isn’t there, what exactly the drivers are fighting at the wheel. The message inside the factory is that there will be no finger-pointing, only solutions.

“We looked at the problem: what’s the issue, where are we lacking downforce, why the drivability is not great, what are the drivers struggling with?” Komatsu said. “We’re all on the same page, trying to fix the issue, trying to put performance on the car. But of course, again, that takes time.”

He knows those words don’t help much on a Sunday afternoon when both cars are parked in the garage and the points go elsewhere. But this is the reality of a small team living inside the most aggressive development cycle Formula 1 has ever seen.

“Lots of things we’re putting in place will take time for it to materialise,” Komatsu added. “But we’ve just got to believe in ourselves, the teamwork, support each other, and we’ll get through it like we did the last two years.”

For now, the driver market can wait. The real verdict on Haas will come not from a contract announcement, but from whether Bearman and Ocon are still sliding backwards when the next wave of upgrades arrives.