Good news for talents: This F1 team also wants a Junior Academy!

21:52, 01 Jul

Updated: 22:04, 01 Jul

byLudo van Denderen

The tenth team in Formula 1 also wants to create its own junior academy, Ayao Komatsu, the team principal of Haas F1, explains.

For Red Bull Racing, the Red Bull Junior Team is a lifeline. One talent after another has made it to Formula 1 through the Austrian team's training programme. Success breeds imitation, and in the years after Red Bull set up a successful training programme, one team after another followed with their own academy.

Haas have a test team for the first time

Last week, it was revealed that Aston Martin have also started their own Driver Academy. Now, the Haas F1 team is the only one on the current grid without its own academy, but that is set to change in the future, GPblog can report.

"That's something we are discussing, but we're still building," says Ayao Komatsu, the team principal of Haas.

"This year, the first time we actually had a, let's say, test team, who can run the previous car at the same time [with the F1 team competing]. Like when we were racing Barcelona, we had a test car running in Paul Ricard at the same time."

Ayao Komatsu works for Haas on its own training program

"It was the first time in ten years that we were able to do that. So we're really building up. This year, for the first time, we are testing with a very limited number of drivers thanks to the collaboration with Toyota. We will expand this step by step in the future," Komatsu said.

"That's the first time we can do that in 10 years. So we are really just building up, so this year the first time we do a test with a very few selected drivers thanks to Toyota's collaboration. In the future we will expand it by just a step by step."

First Toyota, then talents

Ultimately, Komatsu wants a programme for drivers who are racing in, for example, Formula 2, Formula 3, or Super Formula. When exactly that phase will start is a difficult question for the Japanese team principal.

"This year we're just really focusing on more Toyota drivers," continues Komatsu, who indicates that there will be more TPC tests (Testing of Previous Cars, red) towards the end of the season.

Afterwards, it will be assessed what the best way forward is. "Depending how that goes, we can make a judgment call to say how far do you want to expand it for next year," says the team principal, who expects the start-up of the project to be spread out over several years.