Haas’s new alliance with Toyota is a seismic moment in the short history of Formula 1’s youngest team.
The American squad joined the grid back in 2016 with a new – and to some, controversial – model in allying closely with Ferrari for its technical development. Now, it has a new partner in the giant automotive manufacturer.
The primary aim is for Haas to “speed up” – per its team principal Ayao Komatsu, the driving force behind this deal given his friendship with Toyota Gazoo Racing’s general manager of motorsport engineering, Masaya Kaji – its plan to make good on its ambition and become a competitor further up the F1 grid than it has previously managed. The team also wants to firmly move on from its results nadir of finishing last in 2023.
There have already been clear signs this year of change from the investment-less frustration that resulted in Guenther Steiner’s exit at 2023’s end. Komatsu secured investment for a team-first recruitment drive from team owner Gene Haas as early as this year’s Australian GP. The team is also getting a brand new hospitality structure to use at European races from 2025.
PLUS: How Komatsu is succeeding where Steiner failed on Haas F1 investment
But the Toyota deal is of a different magnitude and raised many critical questions. Happily, at Toyota’s Fuji Speedway track on Friday, Komatsu was able to provide lengthy answers.
Here are the key ways in which the new alliance will initially work, as well as what the deal means for Toyota, Ferrari and Haas’s other technical partner, Dallara.
For Haas, this is a “long-term” programme
With the new deal announced as a “multi-year agreement”, Komatsu was clear “it's actually a long-term partnership”. Fundamentally for Haas’s “requirement basis”, he said this is all designed “to make us more competitive as F1 team to move up to the more towards the front of the grid”.
“[As] the smallest team on the grid [Haas currently employs 300 people, but has been working to grow this by 10% in its recruitment drive], we are lacking certain resources and hardware capability to understand certain things,” Komatsu added.
“And then in terms of being more competitive in the midfield, we are looking for somebody who can give us more resource and that horsepower and also have the hardware and know how to use that hardware.”
Haas will have access to Toyota’s former F1 facility in Cologne, which currently houses its uber-successful World Endurance and World Rally squads. But, as we’ll cover, this doesn’t mean relying on the Toyota wind tunnel McLaren was using for its F1 aerodynamic development until it replaced its own at its Woking base.
What Toyota gets out of this
“I was looking for a way to speed up saying, ‘How can we take this team forward in the shortest possible time?’” Komatsu stated in a group interview with select media – including Autosport.
“And then once we started talking with Kagi-san, TGR, it's just what they're looking for [too]. It was really mutually beneficial.”
What this means for Toyota is that it can now send its engineers to learn F1-level processes and design ideas, while not having to buy its way onto the grid. Haas, in return, gets a significant resource boost in return.
“They are looking for [the] latest F1 know how, like skill sets,” Komatsu explained. “Which we have, but we don't have their facilities. We don't have the number of people, their resources.”
Toyota engineers won’t initially be part of Haas’s F1 race team
But Komatsu is clear that “not at [the] moment” Toyota engineers will be embedded in Haas’s F1 race operation. However, that is clearly a future ambition for this arrangement. Haas just hasn’t seen the right people to put in place – yet.
“It's not because we don't want to,” explained Komatsu. “Whoever's the right personnel we will put in the race team.
“Certain senior position recruitment at the race team has been a real struggle [in the 2024 recruitment drive]. And then if, TGR had that personnel that fits the profile, I'd have taken him or her straight away. But at [the] moment, they haven't.
“So, we're not taking any TGR personnel for the race team, but that's not because that's the philosophy. We will take whoever is the best fit for the job.”
Toyota is supplying an alternative source of funding for Haas…
By signing up to be Haas’s new technical partner, Toyota has created an alternative way for the team to buy in car parts it needs. This differs in how its existing relationship works with Ferrari and Dallara and is considered a sponsorship fund from which parts will be paid for.
“The mechanism isn't very different from what we do with Ferrari and Dallara,” claimed Komatsu. “For instance, if you buy a front wing from Dallara, there'll be a price. This is done with sponsorship.
“Let's say, if we ask TGR to make our front wing. There will be an exchange in terms of PO [purchase order], so we will be paying for that front wing, but that will come out of this sponsorship money. Whereas making [the] front wing at Dallara, Mr Haas needs to pay. So, the source of money is different, but [the] mechanism itself [is] very fundamentally the same.”
… but it’s not the team’s new title sponsor like Alfa Romeo/Sauber
While Haas displayed an F1 show car featuring Toyota branding on its nose and rear wing at Fuji, the new deal doesn’t make Toyota the team’s title sponsor – as was erroneously reported in some quarters earlier this year.
Haas will retain the MoneyGram title sponsor deal that was announced back in 2022 and is thought to be worth between $25m-£35m a year to the team’s coffers. So, while there is a financial element in terms of resources for car production and development, this deal is worth much more than the branding exercise most recently conducted by Alfa Romeo in being Sauber’s title sponsor from 2018 to 2023.
“At the moment, our title sponsor is MoneyGram so nothing's gonna change in terms of that title sponsor and then team name for the foreseeable future,” said Komatsu.
“Of course, we have a certain point in [a] certain year to open that kind of a talk with the sponsor. We’ll come across the bridge when that comes.”
The deal means Haas can fund its first F1 TPC programme, which is where Toyota’s drivers come in
Toyota’s press release announcing this new deal stated that “the agreement entails the participation in MoneyGram Haas F1 Team test drives by TGR training drivers”.
When asked by Autosport how this would work given in 2025 there is just one official F1 test where new Haas race drivers Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman will need all the seat time they can get, Komatsu revealed how this will centre on F1’s Testing of Previous Cars [TPC rules].
“We haven't had that,” he said of a system where teams can run cars that are at least two years old in tests that fall outside of F1’s cost cap restrictions.
A TPC programme can also be used to train engineers and mechanics, as well as young drivers. Alpine and McLaren have been the most famous examples of deploying TPC programmes to prepare drivers such as Oscar Piastri and Jack Doohan, while Red Bull also used these rules to give Max Verstappen an outing at Imola to assess its 2024 car issues in July.
For Haas, there is now an additional benefit in a new TPC programme fixing how, per Komatsu if “one race engineer, one performance engineer, decides to leave, or has a problem [and can’t] be able to attend the race, we are really struggling, we're on the limit all the time”.
The TPC programme is another example of how this alliance benefits both Haas and Toyota. As Komatsu acknowledged, “to do it by ourselves takes lots of investment” but “TGR is supporting that hugely and then they have a desire to put young drivers in this programme to gain F1 mileage”.
“If we wanted to make 20 days of TPC next year, we can,” he added. “Whether we will do it, or not, it's another matter.
“To do TPC, we are employing some people as Haas F1 team personnel, but TGR will be providing some personnel as well. So, it's going to be a completely collaborative, mixture effort.”
Haas will have a wider reserve driver deal for 2025
Haas currently has Pietro Fittipaldi and Ollie Bearman in terms of its F1 reserve drivers. Bearman replaced the banned Kevin Magnussen in Baku, where Fittipaldi racing in IndyCar meant Haas was relying on Mercedes’ reserve driver Frederik Vesti in case anything happened to the Briton or his temporary team-mate Nico Hulkenberg.
Although Komatsu still must discuss “with Fred [Vasseur, Ferrari team boss about] who should be a reserve driver”, he acknowledged that there’s “definitely an open possibility” Toyota works drivers such as WEC racer Ryo Hirakawa – currently also an F1 reserve for McLaren – could be used as future Haas reserve options around the TPC programme.
Autosport understands that Magnussen could remain a candidate for such a role too, given he and Haas are clear they intend to work together in some capacity once he finishes racing for the team at the end of 2024. That’s should the Dane not get the final spot on the grid alongside Hulkenberg at Sauber.
Toyota is going to help Haas build its first dedicated F1 simulator
Perhaps the most detailed explanation of how the new arrangement will boost Haas came via Komatsu explaining how Toyota is going to help his squad build its first F1 simulator at its Banbury base – where significant additional new facilities are expected to be built too.
Previously, “the only simulator we had access to was Ferrari’s simulator in Maranello”, Komatsu said. But he added Haas would only really “use it for pre-season” as “during the season what we can do in [the] Maranello simulator is pretty limited”. This was because Haas’s small workforce meant Komatsu “cannot ask my UK-based guys to come back from those 24 races and then spend another 10 weeks in Italy to do simulator sessions”.
“Without this partnership, it's very difficult for us to have a simulator programme,” he added. “One, we don't have the hardware, so we need to find the hardware. We need to buy hardware. We need to install it. Then it takes ages to get the simulator up and running to get good correlation etc.
“TGR has expertise in the simulator – both for themselves and for their customer projects. So, they have the hardware and they have the expertise in terms of operation, in terms of queuing – we get all the aspects of a simulator operation. So, again, we are gonna be taking benefit of that through this partnership.”
As well as meaning Ocon and Bearman can use this new system in Banbury to work on their driving craft, Haas plans to use it to strengthen their relationships with their new race and performance engineers. But, critically, it won’t stop using Ferrari’s simulator just yet…
How Haas’s relationship with Ferrari will now work
“Ollie has been driving the Maranello simulator for our aero development as well,” Komatsu concluded on his simulator explanation. “So, to keep some consistency there, Ollie is keeping what he's been doing, but Ollie is gonna drive the simulator in Banbury as well.”
But that is far from all Haas is going to retain in its existing deal with Ferrari. Having been talking with Vasseur “from the very early stages of this idea of the collaboration”, and retaining the concept that the “Ferrari-Haas partnership is the foundation” of his team’s F1 effort, Komatsu is keeping plenty of key existing elements the same with the Scuderia.
He says Haas will “continue to use the Maranello wind tunnel” to design its future F1 cars and will carry on buying Ferrari gearbox and suspension parts. And, in terms of F1 engine supply with Toyota adamant it’s not going to be building a power unit for Haas, the team will remain a Ferrari customer until at least the end of its new deal running to 2028 that was announced back in July.
“We signed with Ferrari until end of 2028 – in terms of technical partnership, PU supply, gearbox supply, etc,” Komatsu stated. “So, fundamentally, nothing's gonna change.
“As far as I'm concerned, this partnership [with Toyota has] got nothing to do with [the] PU side. It's purely on the chassis side in terms of a technical alliance.”
Komatsu also said he worked hard to assure Ferrari that “if they feel that this Toyota-Haas alliance will be a threat to them, that’s not gonna work – so, I made sure that that is not the case”.
He added: “Of course Ferrari sent certain requirements, certain break points, where I had to guarantee them, ‘look, we’re continuing this and this and this’. But, again, that’s what we were going to do anyway. So, it was pretty straightforward really and very collaborative from all sides.”
What this all means for Dallara’s deal to build Haas’s F1 cars
Specialist Italian race car manufacturer Dallara has built every Haas F1 car since the team joined the grid. Komatsu insists “that's another key, important relationship”.
The Toyota deal clearly means it will now be producing certain composite car parts for Haas, but right now this doesn’t mean Dallara will be exiting from its current position with the team. Haas will also keep its design office base in Ferrari’s Maranello factory.
“We'll also be discussing which parameters will keep working with Dallara, which parameters we're gonna work with Toyota, but we will coexist,” Komatsu said. “It's not to replace one another.”
When Haas expects to feel the benefit from its Toyota deal in its F1 results
Hulkenberg recently told Autosport that Haas is going to be a“serious competitor in the years to come”. With Toyota onboard and its funding/design model massively altered, the team is clear it expects this to translate into improved F1 form. Perhaps, even secure a first F1 podium or victory.
But, having been asked specifically if Toyota can help with Haas’s 2025 car design and performance, Komatsu insisted “in terms of actually seeing the benefit, or feeling the benefit, it's not going to be immediate”.
“Like any partnership, we need to understand each other. And then we need to try a few things. Even like carbon composite manufacturing – we need to do certain trials to understand how long it's going to take, what kind of quality information exchanges [are possible]. We need to learn about each other.
“But, like everything, it's gonna take time. And also any organisation, if you move too quickly, it's gonna completely disintegrate. So, we cannot be rushing things too much. Although, it's a race, it’s Formula 1, so we're gonna do things as quickly as possible. But there's a fine balance, so we need to do it correctly.”
