Ahead of his second season at the helm, Haas boss, Ayao Komatsu has made "huge changes" to the American outfit's engineering and trackside operations teams.

Significantly, as the sport welcomes more female followers, performance engineer Laura Mueller has been appointed Esteban Ocon's race engineer, the first woman to hold such a position, while Carine Cridelich, previously with RB, will join the American team in March as head of strategy.

Performance engineer, Ronan O'Hare will be Oliver Bearman's race engineer, while Francesco Nenci, previously the Dakar performance team leader at Audi, is the new chief race engineer.

Mark Lowe, who was previously team manager at Haas, rejoins as sporting director, replacing Peter Crolla who has left the team

"She's a pretty determined character," said Komatsu of Mueller. "She's very hardworking, and her work ethic is really, really good. So she's going to be Esteban's race engineer. And in terms of looking at it personality-wise, Esteban is a pretty determined character as well. So that side, I think the driving force, I think that personality matches pretty well.

"If you look at how many female engineers we have in the office, it's definitely more than before," he continued. "But it's not like I chose Laura because she's female. We don't care about nationality, gender, it really doesn't matter because what matters is work. How you can fit into the team, how you can maximise the performance.

"They have both got good potential and good determination," he added, referring to Mueller and O'Hare. "So we decided to promote internally because that sends a good message for everyone as well, that rather than going for some big names of experience from outside.

"Somebody may not have enough experience to start off with, but good potential, good work ethic, good communication, to just support each other and help."

Komatsu believes that it was in race weekend execution that the team fell particularly short last season, the team having been leapfrogged by Alpine in the final races of the year.

"It's a huge change, but I felt it was one of the weakest areas last year," he said. "AS the more the car became competitive, it kind of exposed it more, if you like. In terms of race execution, we should have finished P6, but we didn't. Part of it was we left too many points on the table from the trackside operation. So we really needed to step up on that one."

Strategic errors were another area where the team lost out.

"We should have scored the points with Kevin in race one," said Komatsu. "That was a pretty straightforward decision as well, that didn't go very well. There were so many times that under pressure we don't seem to function as well as we should do. But it's not just about the people, it is also the amount of training we can give."

As RB and Sauber begin their 2025 preparations with a Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) programme at Imola, last weekend saw Haas take advantage of the rule, running Ocon and Bearman, and Toyota driver, Ritomo Miyata at Jerez last weekend.

"We now we have those (private tests) and also capabilities to simulate certain scenarios now," said Komatsu. "We have a lot more of that before the season starts. We will be better prepared.

"I had to focus on priority triple A, which was the technical side," he said of the overhaul. "I had to make sure that all the real car feedback was going through the technical office and windtunnel, so that we can develop the car correctly. I couldn't delay that for a second. I had to really go for that one.

"I knew it was less than ideal, but I could not change too many things. We are such a small team with no margin, that we cannot just disintegrate. I really had to be brutal in terms of saying, 'OK, I know these things are not great, but I really need to ignore it until such a stage that we can deal with it as a team'.

"So I said 'we're going to do this trackside structure for a year, and then we revamp'. It's kind of like right timing, but it still doesn't change the fact that it's going to be a huge challenge for us."