Haas dismiss '2017 Ferrari' comments

Haas has waved away comments that suggest the only reason for the upturn in pace is because its new car is a clone of the 2017 Ferrar. Haas surprised the paddock at winter testing, when it was realised that the American squad was running with a competitive package.

At qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix, the team was 'best of the rest' as Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean qualified sixth and seventh respectively. However, McLaren's Fernando Alonso said he was "not surprised" as the new car "is a clone of last year's Ferrari."

Force India sporting boss Otmar Szafnauer said: "If you compare Haas with a 'normal' new team like Caterham, they had good resources and had good people and then didn't score a single point.

"Meanwhile Haas is at about the same level as us and this year may be ahead. But I recall that their pace of development slow down during the year - maybe because Ferrari start to focus on their own problems. I don't know," he said.

But Haas' Romain Grosjean has hit back at the comments made by its rivals, saying that it was no different last year: "It’s the same thing every time we’re fast," he said. "It was the same thing last year, we were a ‘Ferrari B [team]’.

"We’re using the same suspension, the same gearbox, the same engine. Everyone knows that the suspension are defining a lot of the flow so of course there’s going to be similarities. But again we’re doing our own car and if we were a Ferrari B we’d be up there with them. It’s not true and it’s not nice for the people that work at Haas and produce a Haas VF-18."

2018 is only Haas' third year in Formula 1, and it has had a much more successful run compared to the likes of Marussia and Caterham, who went out of business only a number of years after entering F1. Grosjean believes Haas has shown potential new teams how to enter the sport and be strong from the get-go.

"I think the way we operate the team and the way we’ve created our partnership is good for F1. It shows that you can come and make things look pretty good in a small amount of time.

"Of course if we had to do everything from zero we’d be nowhere [near] where we are today. So I think it’s a good thing for Formula 1 to show that ‘look, if you want to come to Formula 1 there’s a way to do it that you can actually be successful early on."

Fergal Walsh