Ayao Komatsu has rebuffed suggestions that being a Ferrari customer should give Haas an advantage in the 2026 Formula 1 midfield battle - claiming Audi is “very good”.
The American outfit enjoyed a strong start to the new regulations as it is currently fourth in the standings after two rounds, with Oliver Bearman scoring seventh and fifth in Melbourne and Shanghai respectively.
Haas should therefor be right at the front of the midfield this year and its boss Komatsu reckons Racing Bulls (sixth), Alpine (seventh) and Audi (eighth) are its nearest rivals - with the latter catching the most attention during the China media session.
Audi is making its debut as a full factory team in 2026 after buying Sauber and has been competitive from the off, as Gabriel Bortoleto claimed points and Q3 at the Australia opener.
That is why Komatsu was surprised when it was suggested that his team holds a clear engine advantage against Audi and co, saying: “I don't know how you can say... 'ours clearly better than Audi'. I don't know what you're looking at to say that. Have you looked at GPS trace? No, I don't think you can say that at all.
“When I say power unit, I'm purely looking at result and speed trace. Whether some of it is coming from ICE or some coming from energy deployment, but if we look at what they can do on the straight, Audi is very, very good. Very good.
“So, yeah, I'm shocked when you said ‘you're clearly better than Audi’. By the way, this is me not having a go, this is no way me having a go at Ferrari or anything.
“I think it was interesting because we are fighting against four power unit manufacturers. Racing Bulls with Ford and then Audi, and then Gasly [and] Alpine with Mercedes. Then when we are racing against those guys, we see clearly different deployment capabilities, stronger strategy.
“So, we had to learn that very, very quickly and for sure, I cannot draw any conclusion on that, let's say, straight line speed side, we are ahead. It was actually very difficult. As you saw, it was very difficult to overtake.”
Komatsu’s comments were then put to Bortoleto’s team-mate Nico Hulkenberg, who has endured a mixed start to the year having failed to start in Melbourne due to a mechanical problem.
That denied a good opportunity of points as he qualified 11th, which is where the veteran also started and finished in Shanghai so the pace is certainly there but with improvements required.
“I think we're okay,” said Hulkenberg. “Without the PU we wouldn't be where we are, but still, especially I think in a lot of the race condition situations, we have a lot of work and cleaning up to do.
“We're obviously also the only two cars. We don't have a customer team, so less data than most of the other manufacturers that have multiple teams. So no, I still feel there's still work in progress and still a lot of room for improvement there.”
