Only four races have taken place so far in the 2016 Formula One season, but the new outfit owned by American entrepreneur Gene Haas is already on track to be the biggest F1 success story of the year. Before the season began, the odds were stacked against Haas. It is the first American-owned F1 team in 30 years, and the previous attempt to get one off the ground failed before it was due to have its first race in 2010. In fact, the only team still racing out of the four that joined F1 over the past decade is Manor. It has scored a grand total of two points since coming into the series in 2010. Haas has bucked this trend and currently has 22 points to its name in just four races. At this year’s season opener in Australia, Haas became the first team in 14 years to get points in its debut race. Since then it has scored more points-paying finishes than any all-new team this millennium and is fifth in the standings. Its success has been driven by some ingenious race strategy, and what makes it all the more impressive is that the mastermind behind it had it all mapped out before Haas even took to the track. The race strategy department at Haas reports to the team’s chief race and test engineer Ayao Komatsu, who says that during the Grands Prix his duties are “strategy and decision making.” He adds that doing his job well requires being able “to get the best out of people. To be able to make a correct decision under pressure. To be proactive.” Australia proved how capable he is at that. With three different compounds of dry tires to choose from -- at least two must be used in a dry race -- strategy is arguably more important than ever. In the season opener, Haas driver Romain Grosjean gained an advantage from being switched from soft to medium tires following an accident that knocked teammate Esteban Gutierrez out of the race and led to a red flag. Since the flag came out before Grosjean had gone into the pits, he was able to change his tires without needing to make a stop during the race.

Although it may seem like Komatsu was just reacting to the events as they were developing, he had actually maneuvered the team into a position where it could capitalize on the situation. “We’ve only done four races this year, and all of them turned out to be as we expected before the race,” he says. “So, in that sense, we did not have nasty surprises. Having said that, we had to make a decision to start on the soft tire in Melbourne purely based on what we saw in 2015, as Friday was wet and no meaningful running was done. The call was made not based on the facts we knew, but it was based on the fact that we had very little data to go by. Therefore, the important thing was to leave the strategy option open in the race to be able to react to the actual tire behavior once the race had started. “Starting on the soft tire gave us this freedom and left the door open for a one-stop strategy. Also, in that race, the decision to stay out under the safety car was marginal. Of course, we benefited massively from the subsequent red flag because we stayed out under the safety car. Obviously, the way the red flag worked for us was good luck, but you still need to be there to capitalize when the luck is on your side.” Since then, Komatsu has proved that his smart race strategy calls were not a flash in the pan. At race two in Bahrain, Grosjean deliberately only ran once in the second qualifying session in order to save a new set of supersoft tires. It meant that Grosjean sacrificed eighth place on the grid, but Komatsu reckoned the tires would be more valuable than being higher up in starting position. He was right. A new set of tires is worth around two seconds over a stint compared to a used set, but a grid slot is precious, especially if sacrificing it means that a driver is held up. Fortunately for Grosjean, Force India driver Nico Hulkenberg, who was in front of him, was involved in contact on the opening lap in Bahrain and had to pit. It boosted Grosjean’s chances, and he finished the race in season-best fifth place. He was out of the points at the following race in China, but it was the first one both Haas drivers finished.

At last weekend’s Russian Grand Prix, the team’s performance revved up again as Grosjean started 15th -- far back enough to avoid a first-lap incident involving Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel and his rival at Red Bull Racing, Daniil Kvyat. It boosted Grosjean to eighth place, and when he pitted on lap 17 he switched to soft tires that perfectly suited the track’s ultra-smooth surface and allowed him to hold his ground.

These kind of decisions are made on the pit wall where Komatsu sits during the race and other sessions over a Grand Prix weekend. Some teams have a strategist at the factory working live with their counterpart on the pit wall. The strategy planning isn’t just done beforehand but also during the race, qualifying and practice sessions, when analysis is carried out to assess the baseline competitiveness of the other teams.

The significance of race strategy in F1 was thrust into the spotlight in 1994 when refueling pit stops were reintroduced after a 10-year hiatus. The season was won by superstar Michael Schumacher, who became the first German F1 champion and went on to win a further six titles. His Benetton team employed a groundbreaking refueling strategy, removing the filter on the fuel rig to give an estimated one second of savings over an eight-second pit stop. It led to Benetton winning races through what is known as undercutting or "overtaking in the pit lane," which is actually not what it may seem.

Essentially, it involves gaining ground on-track by making several pit stops when only one is actually needed. F1 cars are at their fastest when they have a low fuel load, as it reduces their weight, and are running on grippier, but less durable, soft tire compounds. The improvement in performance is such that it could offset the 30 or so seconds lost making a pit stop. Teams worked out that they could use this boost to get by cars that were otherwise harder to overtake. Instead of fighting wheel to wheel, they would pit early, return to a clear track and put in faster laps to ensure they emerged ahead once their rivals had made their stops.

It drove teams to do away with rigid pit-stop schedules, but they had to re-evaluate this strategy in 2007 when F1 switched to a single tire supplier and stipulated that all drivers use all of the supplied specifications of dry tires during a race. Teams had to rethink their broader race strategies again three years later when refueling was banned. Since then, their plans have become even more fluid due to the introduction of recovery systems that use heat and energy created by the car to give a boost on acceleration.

Nevertheless, the key factors used to determine a race-winning strategy are still the same. They range from fuel load, tire degradation and tire performance to the length of the pit lane, driver ability, the likelihood of overtaking, the chances of an accident and the weather forecast.

During the race itself, strategists like Komatsu analyze all of their plans, from tire selections to fuel loads, and quickly advise the race engineers of amendments in reaction to events on-track. Number-crunching is one of the key skills, as is the ability to spot trends, analyze and make decisions based on complex and ambiguous data.

Chance plays a big part in the success of any strategy, but the teams don’t leave it to luck. Instead, they use sophisticated predictive modeling software to analyze the probability of events taking place and build the results into their plans for the race.

Komatsu says he makes the most of his equipment. “I made some requests for additional functionalities and the way certain things are viewed, but nothing fundamental. With the way we are set up, it is not really possible to change the software fundamentally, so we have to basically get the best out of what we have. This is actually the same for many things in Haas F1 Team as we are a brand-new team. We need to walk before we try to run.”

Haas has scored in 75 percent of its races thanks to Komatsu’s strategy calls. Its best result so far came in Bahrain, and Komatsu says he is most proud of the decisions he made in that race than in any of the others. However, he reveals that the key to success was not actually a call made during the race itself but two days before in practice.

“I would say Bahrain was the best because we achieved that result not just because of the strategy decisions made during the race itself, but also because of all the preparation or planning, and we ran the car reliably to get good data on Friday. This allowed us to make a correct decision on Friday night. If we had got this decision wrong, we wouldn’t have had correct race tires.”

He explains that “pre-event preparation clearly indicated we needed to concentrate on soft and supersoft tire performance during P2 (the second practice session). So, we planned our P2 program accordingly and analyzed P2 running data on Friday evening. This result indicated we should save at least one set of supersoft for the race. It was also clear that we did not need more than a single set of soft tires for the race. Once we had this result, our P3 (third practice session) and qualifying program almost wrote itself. In the race, we simply executed the best race strategy that was available for the tires we had.

“Everything needs to come together to achieve the best result on Sunday. For example, we only ran once in Q2 (the second qualifying session) in order to save one set of supersofts for the race. Romain did a fantastic job of qualifying in ninth, which was the best possible outcome. This meant he was in the best position to benefit from the planned strategy on Sunday.

“In the race, he executed our plan beautifully. With an aggressive three-stop strategy, he had to overtake several cars while saving fuel to get to the end of the race. He did this perfectly with brilliant, decisive overtaking maneuvers that minimized time loss. I was over the moon after the race because it was the result of a real team effort. Literally, everyone played their part at some point to produce the result.”

Komatsu has a long history working with Grosjean at his former team, Lotus, where the Frenchman repeatedly outperformed teammate Pastor Maldonado even though he was a race-winner with Williams.

Komatsu was Grosjean’s race engineer from the start of the driver’s second spell with Lotus in 2012. Together the duo scored nine podium finishes until Komatsu was promoted to the role of chief race engineer at the start of 2015.

After graduating from college with a degree in automotive engineering and a Ph.D. in vehicle dynamics and control, Komatsu began his F1 career as a tire engineer with the British American Racing team in 2003. Three years later, he switched to championship-winning outfit Renault, which was later renamed Lotus, and he stayed there till January this year when he became one of Haas team boss Guenther Steiner’s key hirings.

At Renault, Komatsu worked with technical director Pat Symonds, and he says this was formative to his career. “The best training is to learn from someone really good. My first training was with Pat Symonds. Other than that, good engineering background, understanding of racing in general, common sense and the ability to think logically under pressure are the key factors.” Others who know him well agree.

Early in his career, Komatsu engineered an F3 car for Litespeed team boss Nino Judge, who says, “Ayao from an early age was very good at listening to what a driver was saying and translating it into an engineering solution to make the driver faster. He knows it’s what a driver needs as all drivers have different styles. There is an art to hearing and not presuming that only data analysis has the answers.”

One word that Komatsu uses frequently is “preparation” and says that this is the most important element of his job.

“Preparation. Good preparation allows you to make a decision calmly with a clear mind under pressure. Hence, if your main plan goes wrong, you are able to switch to your backup ‘plan B’ with confidence.”

He reveals that Haas “always have a primary and secondary plan (and sometimes a third plan). So, depending on how the race unfolds, the strategy may have to be switched from the base plan to an alternative one. Also, you are always assessing risk versus reward, so you have to get this right for your specific circumstance, which changes during the course of the race.

“We look at last year’s strategy data for the race we are going to. We also look at how this year’s tires are behaving compared to the last year’s. Last year’s data is very useful, as the tires are fundamentally the same. So, most of the limitation stays the same. Based on this information, we run simulations for various scenarios. Before going to the event, this gives you a reasonably good idea of several possibilities and which tire compounds are likely to be needed for the race.”

“Preparation is the key. During the race, many things can happen or change very quickly. If you are well prepared, a decision can be made quickly in a logical manner. By contrast, if you are not well prepared, it adds unnecessary pressure and increases a chance of making a wrong decision.

“We haven’t had it this year, but last year, I had a situation where the tire behavior in the race was very different to what we expected. However, since we did our homework beforehand, we were able to switch the strategy to the alternative plan with confidence. However, I do remember that it was a big surprise as the situation was almost totally opposite to what we expected. Again, if we didn’t have good preparation beforehand, I think it would have been difficult to respond correctly in a timely manner.”

All of the homework and preparation done by the team would appear to be working perfectly as Haas has raced off with far more points than predicted. Komatsu had these words for anyone who is thinking about following in his footsteps.

“Have a good engineering or mathematical background. It is also very important to have a good understanding of the race weekend operation in general. The best strategists I have worked with so far came from various backgrounds. However, what was common among all of them was that they had a very good understanding of overall racing and the race weekend. If I put it very simplistically, strategy is just numbers, but you need to be able to look at those numbers with common sense. This sometimes is easier said than done.”

Indeed, common sense sometimes seems to be in short supply in F1, but clearly it is a key part to the formula for Haas’ success.

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