'Best Friday so far this year' for Haas

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A trouble free day of practice on Friday was just what the Haas F1 Team was looking for this week.

Romain Grosjean was ninth fastest in both FP1 and FP2 in Bahrain. His team mate Kevin Magnussen improved from 16th place in the hot daytime session to 11th once the floodlights took over after sunset.

With no incidents or glitches to contend with, the team was able to complete a solid day's work preparing for Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix.

"It was a good day for us," said team principal Guenther Steiner. "For sure, it was our best Friday this year.

"We completed our programs in FP1 and FP2. The car seems to be competitive, as well, for points. Now we’ll go look and see what we can do better and come back tomorrow."

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"It was a pretty solid day," confirmed Grosjean. "It was very warm – the first time we’ve had those conditions this year.

"We need to keep working on the car. Clearly, tyres are having a tough time on the long runs. A qualifying lap is only a lap, so it’s pretty fun.

"There’s a lot of work to be done for tomorrow,' he added. "A lot to learn from today. Hopefully we can find a little bit of performance for tomorrow."

"We had a decent day," contributed Magnussen. "We have some interesting things to look at for tomorrow, but so far things are not too bad."

GALLERY: All the pictures from Friday in Bahrain

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.