The Haas F1 Team was celebrating its best result so far in 2017, after Kevin Magnussen earned the squad six points with his seventh place finish in Baku on Sunday.
Magnussen was running as high as third place at one point. However he admitted after the race that a podium finish had never really been on the cards.
"It was a crazy race with all the safety car periods, the red flag – so many things happened.
"We were in P3 at one point and I got a bit excited about that!" he said. "To come away with a seventh-place finish is pretty good."
It was better than the team had been expecting, after suffering ongoing braking issues during the weekend.
"There’s just been some issues with brakes and just not being that competitive on this track and the layout not suiting us," Magnussen admitted.
"I stayed out of trouble and had a good balance in the car. The car’s been handling well all weekend," he added. "I had some fun out there. It was a great afternoon.”
“A very eventful race," noted team principal Guenther Steiner. "A fantastic show all over the place.
"Not a bad day for Haas F1 Team," he noted. "For us it was a good result with seventh, our best finish this season. We’re very happy for Kevin to achieve this."
By contrast, Magnussen's team mate Romain Grosjean toiled away all afternoon but finished out of the points in 13th. "Romain had a tough outing," Steiner conceded.
Grosjean had been more unsettled by the braking issues on the VF-17 throughout the weekend. Steiner admitted that this was now the team's biggest headache.
"I hope, in a few more races, we’ll forget about talking about brakes and just use them like everybody else," he said.
"As a team we need to get on top of that, and we will.
"Then we can be consistently in the points with two cars. That’s our aim. If races are happening like this, with all the events going on, we want to be there to pick up the crumbs."
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