Grosjean: Haas beyond expectations

Romain Grosjean acknowledges that Haas' incredible start to their debut campaign as far outweighed any expectations the team had.

Heading into round five of the championship, Grosjean is seventh in the Drivers' Championship having amassed 22 points.

Such has been the Frenchman and Haas' form that he has only finished one grand prix, China, outside the points.

Asked if he believed when he first tested the VF-16 in Spain back in February that P7 would have been possible, he said: "Not really, to be fair. 

"I don’t like to set myself an objective, in terms of position. If I thought about where we could be, what we can do, it’s definitely better than anyone was expecting, and certainly myself. 

"China was a good grand prix to bring us back down to earth and help us to understand a few things. Russia was good, as well. We worked hard to get P8 at the end.

"We’re beyond expectations, but we’ll take it. We’ve scored points three out of four times. Everyone is improving. There are still a lot of areas where we can be better. 

"Everything has been a great achievement, and we should be able to keep that form."

The former Lotus driver is anticipating Formula 1's return to the Circuit de Catalunya as it will be Haas' first real opportunity to measure their progress.

“It’s certainly going to be useful to have data from the winter testing, even though the conditions, the temperature and everything are going to be very different.

"The tyres are different as well – we don’t have the supersofts we used in the winter. But I think it’s still going to be good. I’m not sure it’s going to help us to set up the car initially, but it will help us to double-check everything we have done and to see if we’ve been going in the right direction since the winter testing.”

He added: "The advantage of having data from the winter testing, and going back a few races into the season, is that you can check if you’ve been doing a good job in going in the right direction, in terms of the setup of the car and so on.

"I’m very much looking forward to getting back to Barcelona and trying the updates we’ve got and the setups we’ve been using. Hopefully, we’ll get more updates and then check that we’re doing the right thing with the car.”