As ongoing tensions in the Middle East have forced the cancellation of the 2026 F1 Bahrain and Jeddah GPs, Haas Team Principal Ayao Komatsu described the break as both helpful and disruptive.
Haas F1 Team currently sits 4th in the Teams’ Standings after a mixed start to the new season. Ollie Bearman leads the team’s scoring with 17 points and a best result of P5 in Shanghai. However, he has also endured one of the toughest moments of the campaign after suffering a 50G crash in Suzuka while avoiding Alpine’s Franco Colapinto, who had slowed dramatically due to super clipping.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the garage, Esteban Ocon has only scored one point across the three races, with a P10 result at the Japanese GP. In Melbourne and Shanghai, the French driver finished just outside the points in P11 and P14, respectively, while also picking up a 10-second penalty in China after causing a minor collision with Colapinto.
Momentum interrupted
With the 2026 F1 season set to resume in Miami on May 1-3, Komatsu noted that the one-month pause will be both advantageous and disadvantageous for Haas, as he said in a print media session in Japan:
“You can look at it both ways, you know, but you’ve got to take every, let’s say, not a break, but things like that as an opportunity. You’ve got to make the most of it. You know, of course, in a way, I’d rather have those two races, because we have the momentum, we have a strong car, and then Bahrain testing, we are very happy with the car, so I expect Bahrain to be strong, and then Jeddah, I think our drivers are very strong,” he said, as Haas impressed in Bahrain testing, completing 802 laps with strong reliability from the VF-26.
“So in a way, that’s a bit sad, from a selfish point of view, that we cannot carry on this momentum, but at the same time, the amount of workload, physically and mentally, to get the car running in Fiorano and Barcelona has been huge. Then we’ve been non-stop then coming to the Bahrain test, solving the problems, preparing for Melbourne, Shanghai and here.”
He continued: “So we can now maximise this, let’s say, break. It’s not a break, right? It’s just we’re not going racing. We need to maximise the use of this time to say, ok, what are the things, which is actually quite clear, that we haven’t been able to look at, investigate, while we’ve been racing. So I feel like we can use this time to maximise, to make the foundation stronger, so that we are much better prepared when we are preparing for Miami.”
A busy start to the 2026 F1 season
After wrapping up the 2025 F1 season with post-season testing following the Abu Dhabi GP, teams and drivers faced one of the shortest winter breaks in recent years. 2026 began with three pre-season tests, with the F1 Barcelona shakedown taking place on January 26-30, followed by Bahrain testing from February 11-13 and February 18-20, ahead of the Australian GP on March 6-8.
With this in mind, when asked about how much this one-month break will help people on a human level, Komatsu explained:
“Yeah, and not just physically, on a mental side. Of course, again, to start off is to prepare the car, so make sure the car can hit the track. That is a huge pressure, right? And then again, to have it reliable, then get the performance out, week in, week out. That’s been a huge, huge mental strain, especially for a small team like us, because everybody goes an extra mile.
“So I think it’s actually very positive to have that balance, where we don’t need to travel. At least in the factory, we can look at, don’t have to worry about race support, we can look at the foundations, what we’ve missed, what we couldn’t deal with during race weekend, to set ourselves better for Miami,” he concluded.
