Kevin Magnussen believes Haas' underperformance in Melbourne after its strong display in the first two races of the season was "an outlier" linked to a poor starting set-up and bad Safety Car timing on race day.
After qualifying and finishing among the top ten in Bahrain and in Jeddah, Magnussen failed to make the Q1 cut at Albert Park while teammate Mick Schumacher lined up P15 on the Australian Grand Prix grid.
A long first stint on the hard tyre pushed Magnussen all the way up to seventh, but the Dane fell down the order after pitting under the Virtual Safety Car regime.
He nevertheless battled his back to P14 where he finished, just one spot behind Schumacher.
"It was kind of on eggs a little bit out there," Magnussen told the media after his race.
"But good fun, a nice track, bummed not to get points but we made a small gamble, I would say, with the hard tyres because we felt like we were faster than our position, which we were.
"But again, the Safety Car came and ruined completely the strategy and we know that’s the gamble – it’s happened two times now, so it’s a bummer. But we’ll take them next time."
Both Magnussen and Schumacher's race would have likely yielded bigger points and perhaps ven a top-ten finish had they qualified higher up the grid.
Based on Haas' relative performance, the F1 returnee believes the US outfit should have been a top mid-field contender had it gotten its car's set-up right from the outset.
"I think this was an outlier," he explained. "The starting set-up we had here wasn’t good and we were also struggling a bit with tyres because of this new tarmac, but we turned it around and we were able to get much closer to the pack in the race.
"We actually had pretty decent pace, outraced the Alpine of Alonso and he almost qualified on the front row, so looking at that it’s a positive.
"We were able to turn things around and we will score points next time."
Schumacher agreed that the team's baseline set-up on the opening day of running at Albert Park left the team chasing on Saturday and on race day.
"I think because of the Friday, we just started the weekend a little bit behind and then, reaching qualifying, we still had to make some changes. By then it was just too late," Schumacher has explained.
"I think we have a better overview of what is happening, a better understanding, and now we just need to put it all in place."
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