Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHaas F1 Team

Chief Lotus engineer to follow Grosjean to Haas

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Lotus chief race engineer Ayao Komatsu is set to follow Romain Grosjean to the new Haas F1 Team.

Komatsu has been at Lotus since 2006 and was Grosjean's race engineer from the start of the Frenchman's second spell with the team in 2012. Together the pair scored nine podium finishes until Komatsu was promoted to the role of chief race engineer at the start of this season.

With Grosjean joining Haas in 2016 he has asked Komatsu to join him at the new team, which has been working hard to recruit experience F1 personnel ahead of its debut next year.

F1i understands Komatsu is set to agree to the move, although it is not yet clear if Komatsu will join as chief race engineer as he was at Lotus or if he will revert to being Grosjean's race engineer at Haas.

Haas team owner Gene Haas said in Austin that the partnership with Ferrari and addition of Grosjean has made the team more attractive to senior personnel having already recruited former Caterham and Marussia employees.

“I think that’s an in process development where people come available," Haas said when asked if he had recruited everyone he wanted. "As a result of our relationship with Ferrari and then hiring Grosjean we’re starting to notice that we’re attracting better personnel, more experienced personnel, so I think those relationships are helping.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.