There have been many changes afoot at the Haas F1 team, and we’re not just talking about their all-new driver line-up for the upcoming season. As Esteban Ocon joins the team, Haas have promoted Laura Mueller, previously Performance Engineer, to the Frenchman’s Race Engineer. This change makes Mueller the first female in F1 to assume the position. Team Principal of Haas, Ayao Komatsu, speaks about her, “She’s a pretty determined character. And then she’s very hardworking,” he compliments. “Her work ethic is really, really good.” Also being promoted from his Performance Engineer role, Ronan O’Hare steps in to be Race Engineer for Oliver Bearman, the Brit driving for the American team in what will be his first full season on Formula One.
Carine Cridelich will also be joining the team after moving from the Racing Bulls team. She will take the position of Head of Strategy, a role that Haas have been looking to fill for a quite some time. Mark Lowe becomes Sporting Directer, and Francesco Nenci has assumed the position of Chief Race Engineer after the role was vacant for a year. After working with Haas for a long time, Pete Crolla is departing his role as Team Manager.
“I felt we had to do it at some point,” Komatsu commented on the changes, “Then, when’s the right moment? It’s never the right moment. But we decided we’d rather do it this year than in ’26 with the complete new generation cars. So, at least the regulation, technical regulations are stable. What we’re dealing with sporting-wise is stable.
“The influx of those new people coming in. Yeah, no doubt it’s not going to be easy, but I felt we had to do it at some point. We can’t keep putting it off.”
After Alpine beat Haas to sixth place in the Championship last year, Haas is bringing in changes and new drivers to give Haas more knowledge and talent as pre-season testing continues to creep closer.
