Haas boss Guenther Steiner admitted he feared Haas could squander another opportunity for big points at the Bahrain Grand Prix after a few tense moments during the race.
Haas botched pit stops for both its drivers while running fourth and fifth in Australia, prompting a change to its crew for the second race. While Romain Grosjean hit trouble in qualifying on Saturday, Kevin Magnussen started the race from sixth.
Magnussen's race was dramatic. He was involved in a wheel-banging moment on the first lap, before nearly being taken out by Grosjean midway through the race when the Frenchman found himself held up behind a Force India. Magnussen had just taken on new tyres but then spent a lap behind his teammate before the Frenchman pitted -- prompting a flurry of angry, censored radio message from the Danish driver.
Magnussen ended up completing an impressive drive to fifth, although Grosjean finished outside the points in a race which saw his car shedding bodywork at numerous stages.
"It's good for the morale, absolutely," Steiner said after the race. "From a morale point of view, fifth place, let's do it again and keep it going. Nobody can sit back and get lazy.
When told about the tense moments in the race, Steiner replied: "You can imagine how you feel! I didn't want to have a deja vu of Australia.
"We had two cars in the points at one stage, solid, and then it was like 'it cannot go away again!' One actually went away. For the team, it's very important for the guys. We had a tough winter. They worked really hard, all the guys. You get to Australia, you're running good, very good, everything, and then you lose it like this. But they came back."
Steiner felt Haas could have finished with both cars in the points were it not for Grosjean's issues.
"He lost some parts on the car. The car was apparently undriveable, he lost a lot of downforce, we can see that. He had to come in and he lost a safe ninth or tenth position. So he was annoyed about that. We need to see if he touched anybody or if he went over the kerbs, what happened there, why we lost it. He was missing some of the bargeboard, the side flaps. The car just lost a lot of downforce."
Haas had focused on practicing its pit stop procedures in Bahrain after the events of the season opener and Steiner said the improved confidence was clear to see.
"The pit stops were solid. There was nothing wrong with it. We get that confidence back at least. We're building up again from what we've got. Next time hopefully we can have two cars in Q3 and two cars in the top 10."