Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has left his role after 10 years leading the US-based team.
The 58-year-old Italian will be replaced by the team’s former director of engineering, Ayao Komatsu.
Team owner Gene Haas said: “Moving forward, it was clear we needed to improve our on-track performances.
“We have had successes but we need to be consistent in delivering results that help us reach our wider goals as an organisation.”
Technically, Steiner, who built up the team using an innovative business model, was not fired.
His contract had expired and Haas chose not to extend it, BBC Sport has learned.
Haas added: “In appointing Ayao Komatsu, we fundamentally have engineering at the heart of our management.”
The Haas statement did not include a reaction from Steiner, who did not respond to requests from BBC Sport for comment.
Haas technical director Simone Resta has also left the team in the wake of Steiner’s departure.
Komatsu said: “I’m looking forward to leading our program and the various competitive operations internally to ensure we can build a structure that produces improved on-track performances.
“We obviously haven’t been competitive enough recently, which has been a source of frustration for us all.”
Komatsu has been at Haas since their track debut in 2016.
A star presence has been lost
Steiner has become famous in recent years through the Netflix documentary series Drive to Survive.
His direct and forthright personality, including copious amounts of swearing, attracted millions of fans, and led to a book, published last year, which became a best seller.
It remains to be seen whether Haas will continue to be of interest to audiences and investors without Steiner’s personality at the helm. At team appearances, he often received bigger cheers than the drivers, Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen.
Steiner also kept the team going through the pandemic after Gene Haas told him that he would close it if he could not find more money.
Steiner employed Mick Schumacher, Michael Schumacher’s son, and Nikita Mazepin, the son of Russian billionaire Dimitry Mazepin, as pay drivers to source those funds.
He also found the team’s current title sponsor, MoneyGram, which is said to have been unhappy about the decision to let Steiner go, fearing a loss of publicity for its brand.
Why did Haas remove Steiner?
Steiner has paid the price for the team’s failure to move up the grid in recent years.
Gene Haas wanted to enter F1 to promote his machine-tools business, and Steiner set up the team with a plan to buy as many parts as possible from Ferrari.
Haas do the minimum required by the rules to be termed a constructor – a requirement of an F1 team – and design only the chassis and the car’s aerodynamic surfaces. Everything else, they buy in from Ferrari.
The approach has proved cost-effective, but it limits a team’s ability to create their own design and solve their own problems.
One of the recurring issues Haas have suffered almost since their inception is failing to understand the complexity of Pirelli’s tyres.
The cars sometimes qualify respectably – occasionally very well – but as a rule will then tend to go backwards rapidly in races.
They finished last in the constructors’ championship last year, eighth of 10 teams in 2022, last in 2020 and ninth in 2021.