Kevin Magnussen is remaining firmly upbeat about his season, despite suffering mixed fortunes in the first four races of 2018.
He was forced to retire while running in the top ten in Australia with a wheel issue. After hitting the highs of fifth place in Bahrain, the Haas driver finished in the top ten again in Shanghai but was then brought back down to earth with a bump in Baku.
The Dane spent most of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix battling car damage after a first lap collision with Sauber's Marcus Ericsson. He ended up in 13th place, in what turned out to be a pointless outing for the team.
Despite that, Magnussen still felt that he'd had a good season so far and that he has started to show what he could really do behind the wheel of the VF-18.
"I’m really enjoying my time with Haas. I feel that we’re benefiting from the experience that we’ve gained together over the last year-and-a-half," he said. "I feel like I’m having a good season, so far.
"Even though it’s been up-and-down and we’ve had some missed opportunities this year, the car performance has been consistent.
"At almost every race this year we’ve been fighting, not with the top-three teams, but to be the fourth or fifth team.
"Perhaps we were a little off in Baku, but apart from that we’ve been able to fight to be the fourth-best team. We just need to put it all together and get the points we have the potential to achieve."
"It’s very tight in the midfield and we’re all very closely matched," he added.
"Even a small mistake can be very costly in terms of positions because everyone’s so close, but it makes for exciting racing, of course. We want to be on top of the midfield as often as we can."
Magnussen is hoping that the start of Formula 1's European phase will be the turning point for the team's luck.
The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is well known to the team because of pre-season testing - and Haas performed particularly well in the march sessions. The track's proximity to the team's UK headquarters also means that Haas will be able to starting bringing in some major upgrades.
“It’s always helpful to have lots of data from any track," he explained. "For Barcelona, all the teams have lots of data, so it doesn’t really give us any advantage.
"It means that we can feel more confident in our starting setup, and then we just adjust for the track evolution since winter testing.”
"We haven’t really introduced that many parts since winter testing," he continued. "I think in terms of numbers and the car, we feel confident that we got the improvements we expected so far."
And the 25-year-old has a particularly personal reason for enjoying racing at Barcelona. In 2013, it's where he clinched the 2013 Formula Renault 3.5 Series championship with DAMS after five wins and 13 podiums.
"I won the World Series by Renault championship there. That’s always a good memory," he smiled.
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