Romain Grosjean has urged Haas to keep its expectations in check after initially being disappointed by his qualifying result in China.

The Frenchman will start from 14th on the grid after struggling for pace on the supersoft tyre, with the front-limited circuit not suiting the VF-16. While the red flag for Nico Hulkenberg's loose wheel prevented any chance of improvement, Grosjean was unlikely to improve and admits the position so far this weekend feels more disappointing due to the excellent first two results he has enjoyed.

"Yeah I think everyone was a bit [down], myself the first," Grosjean said. "We want to stay where we are, we want to stay with the big boys and I think again we’ve been boxing in a higher category than ours for the first two races when on the paper there were no explanations that we shouldn’t be able to be again.

"Here we are, missed experience on this type of track, very little running, a few small issues and that cost us some time again. Tomorrow is a long race, hopefully we can make up some good points and yes I think we have to keep ourselves to the ground and manage expectations."

And Grosjean believes Haas needs to remember what it would have classed as a success at the start of the year.

"It’s been a wonderful start to the season but again if we had been scoring once at one point, another time a point, you’d think this is normal, but what we have been doing is not normal so we have to put our brain to that normal position."

REPORT: Rosberg beats Ricciardo to pole as Hamilton falls in Q1

AS IT HAPPENED: Chinese Grand Prix - Qualifying

Romain Grosjean column: A start beyond my craziest dream

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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.

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