Haas drivers Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean admit their double DNF during the Australian Grand Prix is a “very tough one to swallow”.
The pair started on the third row of the grid after achieving the American outfits best ever qualifying result on Saturday, and ran as high as fourth and fifth in the early stages of the race.
However, both cars suffered a similar issue during their respective pitstops only a couple of laps apart, with what is believed to be an issue surrounding the wheels not being fitted correctly.
The incidents cost the team a potential big haul of points in the first race of the season, as they leave Melbourne without any reward for a strong performance.
“A very tough one to swallow for the whole team with both cars not finishing in such good positions with so much anticipation coming up this race,” said Magnussen.
“Being in such a good position with both cars, it’s just so heartbreaking to finish like that. We will get on top again and we will fight back and do it all again.”
Grosjean echoed his team-mate thoughts at the disappointment of losing such a big result, but the Frenchman remains upbeat about the performance of the VF-18 and hopes it will transfer over to Bahrain in a fortnights time.
“Today I had a great pace. I am sure I could have stayed a bit more with the frontrunner if I had been in front of Kevin earlier in the race,” added Grosjean.
“We will analyse everything, understand what happened exactly, come back stronger as we always do.
“Right now everyone is down and we need to analyse everything to make sure if it’s a problem with the guns, or a problem with the mechanics. We didn’t have any problems in winter testing so it’s a bit strange.
“It’s a lot of points lost today, but if we can repeat that performance over and over, we are going to forget that one very quickly.”
Following the grand prix, Haas were fined $10,000 by the FIA for releasing the cars in an unsafe condition.
