Romain Grosjean believes Haas has up to half a second still to unlock from its 2016 car.
The new team has made a remarkable start to life in F1 with Grosjean following up sixth place in the Australian Grand Prix with fifth at last weekend's race in Bahrain. Despite the impressive performances - which Haas admits have exceeded expectations - Grosjean believes there is plenty of pace still to be unlocked from the VF-16.
“Behind Ferrari would be nice!" Grosjean joked when asked about where Haas could end up. "On paper we are not miles off Ferrari. Lap time wise … I don’t know how much was track evolution but let’s look at the end of Q2 [in Bahrain] where we are one second away, a bit more than that.
"It’s not ridiculous if we get everything right we should have another 0.4-0.5s possibly to gain.”
And when pushed on whether that pace will translate in to an improvement in races too, Grosjean replied: "Yes, in the race there is more performance coming as we're not at 100% of the set-up.
"There are going to be circuits that suit us better than others and we have to keep working, but yeah, I think we can [aim high]. We are a new team - it's not like the car is perfect and we can put it on track and that's where we are. We have a very good baseline, but there are a few things that we can improve."
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