Romain Grosjean has underlined that Haas is in a position to “attack” the opening Grand Prix of 2019 next weekend as Haas eyes a strong start in Australia.
Haas has typically performed well at the Albert Park Street Circuit, with Grosjean taking sixth on its debut three years ago, while last season it led the midfield pack in race trim.
A double pit stop problem cost Haas a strong haul of points – with Kevin Magnussen and Grosjean running fourth and fifth at the time – but the team rebounded to ultimately classify fifth in the Constructors’ Championship.
Haas set encouraging lap times – but in terms of short- and long-runs – during pre-season testing in Spain and Grosjean reckons the team can come out fighting with its VF-19.
“The most important thing was to get a good feeling in the car early on,” said Grosjean on his initial feeling with the new car.
“When you get that good feeling, you know the car is well born.
“That’s important to start the season – to be able to start on a high. It went well. Reliability, we had a few issues, but we’ve been working well to sort them out.
“I believe we’re now ready to attack the first race in Australia. Obviously, there’s always more and more you want to do, but then it’s becoming circuit-specific.
“Now it’s about getting the baseline setup in Melbourne and then fine tuning for Bahrain, China and so on.”
Steiner stressed that Haas has been practicing its pit stops every day in order to avoid a repeat of last year’s disaster.
“We obviously haven’t forgotten last year’s pit stops in Australia, which went wrong,” he said.
“This year we’ve put a lot of emphasis on arriving there prepared. We brought a 2018 car to our car build in Italy so we could train every day and work on pit stops.
“We did the same in Barcelona, as the current car is not always available for pit stop practice when you test. Every day the whole crew practiced around 10 to 12 pit stops a day.”
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