Team Talk - Sunday in Shanghai

Haas F1 Team

Romain Grosjean
"Yesterday was a bit of a joke and today the same guy crashed in front of me on the straight line, so I had to stop. I lost a lot of time. Then (Marcus) Ericsson at the restart left miles ahead of the car in front of me. I don't know what he was doing, so I was already on the back foot. (Esteban) Ocon pushed me on the first lap. I lost half of the right-hand side of the car. From there I just pushed as hard as I could. I couldn't really find an opening on (Jolyon) Palmer. Once I did, though, I had some good lap times. We were doing a decent job, but it was already too late. It was not easy on strategy. The guys did the best job they could. We saw the checkered flag and the lap times were looking decent. I think we had more, but it's time to look forward to the next race and, hopefully, it's going to get better."

Kevin Magnussen
"It was a good race. I had fun out there. I had a good car all the way through the race. I'd made a really poor start, so to come back from that and push, I was really happy. The car's been good today. I was able to look after the front tires, which I think was key, along with working with the team to get the car in the right window. The race was really well managed from the team. It was good strategy to get me out on the supersoft after the intermediates. You had to fight for it, in terms of passing. It's not easy, but you also have grip, so you can take different lines and get close in alternative ways. It's so much more fun when you're fighting in the points. I'm happy for the team and we're looking forward to the coming races."

Guenther Steiner, team principal
"It's great to see Kevin's team scoring their first points since the start of Haas F1 Team. For Kevin to score points on his second race is fantastic. I think Romain had a challenging weekend. In Australia it was Kevin's turn to have a challenging weekend and here it was Romain, though he wasn't lucky in Australia either. Again, I think we showed what we can do and that we are what we think we are. We just have to do it consistently. We can then look to a good season in front of us. Both drivers drove a fantastic race. I think we did more overtaking between the Haas team than the rest of the teams. I'm very proud of that, and we put on a good show. For sure, the weather played a role today, but with the different strategies applied, overtaking is possible. It's still difficult – that was proved with Romain trying to get around (Jolyon) Palmer – he made sure he was wide, but then Romain got by. It just got better from then onward. The flight home will feel a lot shorter with points in the bag. Now, we look forward to going to Bahrain."