Haas F1 Team showed promising pace ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya as their two cars managed to qualify in seventh and eighth places, bouncing back from a disappointing race in Baku.
It was Romain Grosjean who led the way for the team, finishing the session in a strong seventh place as they aim to get the better of their energy drink-backed rivals Red Bull Racing.
“I hope we can carry this form over in the race. Here we’ve got the tires to work nicely, an area we’ve been struggling with recently, but we’re happy with today.” said Grosjean.
“We’re not far off the Red Bull’s and we’re a good chunk ahead of the cars behind us. I think we can be proud of that.
“Everyone knows this track very well, so it’s not easy to make a difference. We extracted the best from today. It’s been a good day – a good qualifying.”
Teammate Kevin Magnussen echoed the thoughts of Grosjean and his hoping to become the best of the rest outside of the Mercedes AMG F1 Team and Scuderia Ferrari.
“We probably did the maximum we could do today. We were just two tenths of a second from one of the Red Bull’s and ahead of the rest of the midfield, so I’m quite happy.” said Magnussen.
“We’re not quite sure about race pace for tomorrow, we know it’s a difficult track to overtake on. Today we were sixth tenths of a second faster than the next best in the midfield behind us, so hopefully we’ll have enough to keep those guys behind.
“I don’t think it’ll be an easy race, but I think we’re in a good position to score good points starting both cars in seventh and eighth.”
Team boss Guenther Steiner was happy with the performance of his two drivers around the 4.655 km circuit.
“It was a good result today. The whole team came back after a hard week in Baku to qualify today in seventh and eighth.
“Everybody did a good job, it’s fantastic. It’s definitely nice to be in this position again. We’re looking forward to tomorrow and hopefully scoring points.”
