Grosjean: No second season syndrome at Haas

Romain Grosjean is hopeful that there will be not second season syndrome at Haas after the team increased their staff numbers during the off-season.

The Frenchman qualified an impressive P6 in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, but both he and Kevin Magnussen would go on to retire from the race in a double DNF.

Their exploits in Melbourne were also symbolic of Haas' first season in Formula 1 last year, starting off well before being hindered by reliability issues.

However, Grosjean believes the team have done everything they can to help combat those problems, especially with bulking up the numbers of those who are working on the car.

"That's what we're looking for, hopefully we're going to get all of that," Grosjean told Motorsport.com.

"We've got more people in the team, more engineers, more knowledge. Hopefully whenever it goes well it's easy to set up the car, but when it doesn't we've got more resource to work hard.

"[There are] some really clever people who have joined the team over the winter and we're really putting a lot of hopes in that."

Grosjean also revealed he was thinking as early as last year that Haas' second season would be a more successful campaign and the right personnel is in place to ensure that it happens.

"That is why we have got Gene [Haas, team owner] because he understands racing, he loves it and he knows the first year is great but the second year is a challenge," added Grosjean.

"It will take time to win so you always need to look one step ahead and with [team principal] Gunther Steiner we have a really good understanding of that.

"Whenever the car was in the wind tunnel and [with] the people we were starting to employ, I knew year two looked better than year one.

"The whole process was actually done in a very clever way, so year one wouldn't be awesome and year two just a drop."