Kevin Magnussen still has faith and belief that his Haas is a very quick car, despite the reliability issues the team suffered in the season opener in Melbourne last weekend.
The Dane retired in the final stages in the race due to a suspension issue while teammate Romain Grosjean suffered from a water leak, and was forced to end his day on lap 11.
Grosjean himself showed that the car appears to be quick, as he stuck his car in P6 in qualifying. Although neither cars finished the race, Magnussen says he would prefer to sort an unreliable car than an underperforming one.
"I’d rather have to sort out reliability than sort out an underperforming car. Performance-wise, it’s there. We just need to make it run," he said. "It’s still very encouraging when you see the car is fast.
"It’s really good news that the car is as competitive as we had hoped for," he continued. "There’s obviously no guarantee it’s going to be as competitive again. We need to work hard to get the most out of it and make it competitive again in China. The car was there, it was performing.
"It was just on my side I had a bit of a tough weekend. I didn’t get enough track time and there were too many issues with reliability that meant I didn’t have a good weekend. It’s positive, though."
Magnussen is hoping for a better result in China, where he thinks turn 1 will be an exciting challenge in the new breed of Formula 1 cars
"I’d say turn one is pretty good fun," Magnussen said. "It’s a very unique corner where you turn in at very high speed and you end up at very low speed.
"It’s an incredibly long corner and pretty unique for that," he added. “I would say turn one is the only non-traditional element. The rest is pretty straightforward."
Fergal Walsh
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Bahrain International Circuit - Winter testing
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