Interview: Haas team boss Ayao Komatsu as you’ve never known him

“I’ll probably go tonight.” Ayao Komatsu glances at his watch as we sit down in the Haas hospitality suite at the Shanghai circuit. “There’s a new place about half an hour from the hotel. It’s a new climbing gym, apparently. My good friend is a climbing coach and he happens to be out here coaching local guys.”

For Haas’ Formula 1 team principal, climbing gyms around the world have been part of the routine for a few years now. Wherever he travels with the F1 circus, he always carries his chalk bag, harness and climbing shoes in his luggage – and he’s familiar with dozens of gyms worldwide, where people spend their free time scaling vertical walls.

“There are plenty of gyms in Singapore,” Komatsu begins listing. “And we stay in the middle of town, so there are plenty of good options. In Brazil, there’s a climbing gym five minutes from my hotel. Milan is amazing – we stay at the Hilton, and literally two minutes from the hotel, there’s probably Milan’s best climbing gym. Bahrain, you can climb as well. Melbourne. Even Suzuka – I know where to go.”

Komatsu’s love for the mountains dates back to his time going mountaineering with his dad and working at a mountain hut as a kid, but it wasn’t until he moved to the UK – with a clear goal of studying engineering and building a career in Formula 1 – that he discovered rock climbing after a chance encounter introduced him to Johnny Dawes, a British rock climber also known as the Stone Monkey.

“I was living in Coventry, playing rugby, and my best mate’s brother Jim was really into rock climbing. He used to share a house with this legend – seriously, a legend – called Johnny Dawes. I’d never even heard of him because I wasn’t into it. But my mate’s brother kept saying, ‘Ayao, we should go, we should go.’ The first time, I climbed at the Warwick University climbing wall – and I enjoyed it. I was reasonably good at it. Then we went climbing together in the Peak District a few times. I loved it – absolutely loved it.

“But this was in 1994. I was finishing a foundation course in Coventry and had managed to get into Loughborough [University], so I was about to start my studies. So, Jim’s brother used to drive from Coventry, pick me up, then we’d go to Sheffield to meet up with Jim and Johnny, to go climbing in the Peak District. I did that for a couple of months. But then I realized – shit, if I keep doing this, I’m going to completely fail my studies and have no chance of achieving what I came here for. So I decided, ‘I love this, but I really need to cut it because it’s too addictive’ – and I stopped climbing after about six months.”

The break lasted almost a quarter of a century. Komatsu rediscovered his love of climbing as an established F1 engineer, with his career leading him to a senior role at Haas.

“One of my kids, just by chance, started taking summer climbing sessions at a local gym in Milton Keynes. Then my second one started too,” he says. “As a parent, I was just taking my kids, waiting for them to finish. But then I thought, I might as well try again. So I bought new climbing shoes – my old ones were a joke from the mid-90s – and a new harness because my old one was way past its safety date. Suddenly, I was climbing again.

“2022 was personally a difficult year for me, and climbing became my coping mechanism – a way to balance my head. So, I started going to climbing gyms when I was away with F1. And I still do – I take my climbing shoes everywhere in the world.

Watch: Climbing Up The Grid with Ayao Komatsu, Haas F1 Team Principal

“The amazing thing about climbing is that it’s multi-dimensional. Some problems require upper body power, some need lower body strength. Others rely on explosive power or balance, for example. It may be flexibility, or just finger strength. It’s not like if you lack upper body strength, you can’t climb – there’s always a route you can challenge. You never get bored.

“And I need something that allows me to switch off. In climbing, if you’re not 100% focused on what’s in front of you, if you have any fear because you’re 60 meters off the ground, or if you’re thinking about something else, everything goes wrong. Your coordination is completely off, and you can’t make the moves you should be able to do. It’s a great mental training for focus.”

For Komatsu, climbing isn’t just a hobby or a way to take his mind off racing – it’s also a source of inspiration. One of his best friends now is Slovenian athlete Janja Garnbret, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and one of the greatest climbers in the world. They met in Singapore at a climbing gym during the Grand Prix weekend, and they have been good friends ever since. He readily admits she’s become one of his role models.

“I think we’re pretty similar in how we apply ourselves, how we manage pressure,” he says of Garnbret. “But the amazing thing is… because of who she is, in any competition she enters, anything but winning is a failure. Imagine that – you come second, and it’s a failure.

“She won the Tokyo Olympics – the first Games with climbing. She was the overwhelming favorite. Everybody expected her to win. Imagine that pressure. And she delivered. But that’s the thing about her – she delivers every single time. How do you do that? How do you cope with that pressure?

“In Paris, she was the overwhelming favorite again. People expected her to be a double Olympic champion by default – at least in outsiders’ eyes. It’s incredibly tough. Her training sessions are incredible, and she goes through them day in, day out. Just pure determination, work ethic. Of course, she’s highly talented – she has more natural talent than anyone else. But that’s not the reason why she wins. She wins because of her process, how she applies herself and prepares mentally, and the team she has around her.
 
“I watched her in the Olympic final in Paris. It was hard to watch. I know how she can climb when she is “free”. In the final in Paris, you can feel what she was carrying. In my opinion, she climbed far from her best ability, but that was still enough for gold.

“That shows how far ahead she is. And it shows that she and her coach knew that in an Olympic final, she wouldn’t be able to perform at 100%. So they trained to make sure that even at let’s say 60%, she’d still win gold. And that’s exactly what happened. It’s insane. I’ve never seen anyone so talented yet so hardworking, dedicated, and focused. And she is a very humble person. It’s inspirational. Every time I watch her train or compete in a World Cup or the Olympics – it is absolutely inspirational.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal, Haas F1 Team

Photo by: Lubomir Asenov / Motorsport Images

Most of Komatsu’s climbing sessions now take place in indoor gyms around the world, but he remains an admirer of real mountains. While he admits his skills aren’t good enough to climb the world’s highest peaks, he dreams of at least coming close to them.

“Of course, I can’t be climbing outside all the time with the job I do,” he says. “So I enjoy doing indoor bouldering sessions all over the world when I can.

“But before I die, I need to see K2 [the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest] with my own eyes. I’m not claiming I can climb K2 – I’d probably die if I tried. But I at least want to see it from base camp.

“When I used to work in a mountain hut as a kid… in the morning mist clears and you see the mountain in front of you – that’s just amazing. It makes you feel so small. It’s an incredibly humbling experience. You can’t describe it. It’s almost like a religious experience. I’m not religious, but for me, mountains are just amazing. And K2 is the one I adore, so I want to go. Not to the summit – the death rate is insane, almost quarter of those who make it die on the way down. But I’d still love to see it before I die.”