Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has described the team's Friday in Hungary as its "worst day" since joining the grid after suffering two crashes, which severely limited its running.
Whilst Romain Grosjean only made very light contact with the barrier, damaging the rear-wing, Kevin Magnussen's first practice stand-in Antonio Giovinazzi crashed heavily, causing severe damage to the side of the Dane's car.
Those crashes were compounded by set-up woes in both FP1 and FP2, whilst repairs to Magnussen's car meant he completed just 11 laps, finishing up 17th quickest ahead of Grosjean, who was more than three seconds off the pace.
"A miserable day today," said a dejected Steiner. "It must be our worst day since we started here a year-and-a-half ago.
"I don’t know where to start with all that happened. We crashed two cars in FP1. One was pretty heavily damaged, but thanks to the hard work of the guys we at least got Kevin out so he could do a few laps.
"Romain’s car was less damaged and he could get out, but we just struggled to find a balance. It’s going from oversteer to understeer and we haven’t found out why yet, so we keep on working. Hopefully, tomorrow we know more and do better and get back to our normal selves."
Grosjean gave the same assessment of his and Haas' day, but is hopeful of finding improvements on Saturday.
"A pretty tough day for the whole team," said the Frenchman. "We’ve been struggling with the balance all day. I think we can quote it as one of our worst Fridays since we started Haas F1 Team.
"We just need to put everything together and try to understand what the problems are. Obviously, we’ve had some issues today. We have to try to get better fortomorrow. It’s not over yet, but we’ve certainly not made our lives easy."
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