Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu: ‘We shouldn’t be fourth. We’re the smallest F1 team’

Coventry-supporting Japanese has used his rebel streak and risk-taking instincts to spur on Oliver Bearman this season

There is no one quite like Ayao Komatsu in Formula One. Haas’s Japanese team principal, a rugby-playing Coventry City fan who left his home country to escape the constraints of conformity, is F1’s rebel without a pause.

As Haas enter their first home race of the season in Miami this weekend, they are on no little roll. Fourth place in the championship is the highest position held by a US team after three races in the sport’s history and Komatsu has engineered it in a sport he once viewed as his great escape.