Kevin Magnussen rues ‘frustrating day’ as Romain Grosjean hails Haas progress

Haas endured a tale of two sides on Friday during practice for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix as newcomer Kevin Magnussen rued his day as 'frustrating', whilst team-mate Romain Grosjean hailed the progress the car has made since testing.

Magnussen completed just eight laps in second practice and was well off the pace down in P19, ahead of only Jolyon Palmer who crashed during the session.

A water leak curtailed his running twice during the session, forcing him to remain in the garage for the bulk of the 90 minutes.

"It was a frustrating day," said the Dane. "I didn’t really get much out of it. We’ll investigate and, hopefully, find the issue.

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"We’ll see what happens tomorrow. We don’t know what the weather’s going to do. It might rain and everything will change anyway. Let’s see what happens."

Magnussen was however pleased to see team-mate Grosjean getting within the top ten during both sessions.

"It’s good to see, though, that the car is competitive. That’s very exciting for the season. That’s the positive to take from today."

Grosjean meanwhile hailed the progress the team have made since Barcelona testing after he finished eighth fastest in both first and second practice, just 1.8 seconds down on Lewis Hamilton's best time.

"It was a pretty good day on my side of the garage," said the Frenchman. "The car felt much nicer than in winter testing, which is great. It’s good to be here and put the right setup on the car and go out there and have some fun.

"We more or less did the program we expected to do today, which is surprising for a first day in Australia, though there was a bit of trouble on the other side of the garage.

"Hopefully we can share our data and get even faster for tomorrow. I’m sure there are plenty of areas where we can improve. Hopefully, tomorrow’s going to be a good day."