Haas overachieved in comparison with its pre-season targets in 2024 regardless of the late season disappointment of dropping out to Alpine for sixth within the constructors’ championship, in accordance with workforce principal Ayao Komatsu.
Alpine’s double-podium end in Brazil proved essential because it picked up 33 of its 65 factors in a single race at Interlagos, serving to it beat Haas within the standings. With Haas seventh forward of RB, Williams and Stake, Komatsu stated the way in which the ultimate outcomes panned out don’t overshadow the progress made throughout his first season in cost.
“After all we had been very disenchanted to not get P6, however we gave it every little thing and it doesn’t simply occur at one occasion, it occurs over the course of the season, over the 24 races clearly,” Komatsu informed SiriusXM. “So ultimately, contemplating the place we’ve come from, we’ve completed an excellent job to get to P7 with so many factors.
“In the long run we scored 58 factors, and if you happen to take a look at the final quarter of the season we scored 27, which by no means occurred earlier than. We all the time would rating within the first a number of races or as much as halfway, however hardly rating any factors within the second half of the season as a result of we couldn’t develop the automobile. However we put that proper, we developed the automobile all through the season very, very properly, and our automobile acquired sooner and sooner and sooner.
“The Abu Dhabi qualifying session was the closest we’ve been to pole place – three tenths – and Nico [Hulkenberg] was solely eight hundredths from P2. So there’s heaps to be optimistic about, and I’m blissful that individuals acknowledge that within the workforce and are blissful that we overachieved what we got down to do earlier this 12 months.”
Komatsu stated he would undoubtedly have signed up for a seventh-place end within the standings in the beginning of the season, given what he had set the workforce as a aim for 2024.
“100%, as a result of the official goal for the workforce was P8,” he stated. “We needed to set a goal, proper? We don’t wish to be useless final, and P8 was a practical goal that we set to everybody. I keep in mind in January I stated ‘If we obtain P8 on the finish of the season we’ve completed very, very properly, as a result of who’re we going to beat?’ You could beat two groups, who else are we going to beat?
“We’re the smallest workforce, we began this 12 months’s automobile late and stopped for a few months to do the Austin improve final 12 months, so we acknowledged from a fairly unfavourable place. How are we going to get to P8? That was the problem we set ourselves, and truthfully I feel the girls and boys did a tremendous job, so I’m very happy.”
