Haas has to understand why its VF-19 is not performing in race trim, according to Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen, in the wake of another sub-par display in China.
Haas, fifth in last year’s standings, showed encouraging pace in pre-season testing and followed it up with a best-of-the-rest showing in both qualifying and race trim in Australia.
It netted Magnussen sixth spot but that remains Haas' sole top 10 finish of 2019.
Magnussen qualified strongly in Bahrain but tumbled out of the points while in China both Haas drivers made Q3 but slipped to 11th and 13th respectively, amid rumoured issues in getting the tyres correctly operated.
“I was a bit worried, to be fair, before the start as our race pace hasn’t been amazing,” said Grosjean.
“The car’s amazing over one lap, but as soon as we go two laps on the tyres, we’re not there anymore. We need to understand exactly what happened.”
Magnussen slipped behind Racing Point’s Lance Stroll on the final lap, compounding a difficult race.
“We need to work on the race pace,” stressed Magnussen.
“Qualifying’s been good all year, so-far, we just need to sort out the race pace – it’s the most important one to be good at. There’s some work to do.
“I don’t really understand it at the moment, we all need to understand it. It’s not easy.
“It’s frustrating that we see we’ve got a good car, that can qualify well, then we can’t convert that into race pace.”
