Unlucky, unbelievable, heartbreaking - Haas left cursing pit stop woe

"A freak incident" was to blame for Haas' disastrous day at the Australian Grand Prix, according to team principal Guenther Steiner.

Published : Mar 25, 2018 15:21 IST

Haas were left rueing a "freak" pit stop incident that resulted in the retirement of both Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean at the Australian Grand Prix.

The opening race of the Formula One season had promised much for the team, but each car then left the pits with a wheel not properly attached, leading to the drivers' retirement.

While Haas are reportedly set to be fined $10,000 for the unsafe releases, the team's immediate frustration centres on a day of disappointment in Melbourne.

"It was just a bad pit stop," said principal Guenther Steiner. "The wheel nut got on wrong and it was cross-threaded. We couldn't catch it early enough and that's what happened.

"You work in a two-and-a-half-second window to do this and we were unlucky. It's one of these things, it's unbelievable. If you try to explain it, [people] would say it’s not possible.

"But it seems it is possible, so we just have to deal with it and get it better for Bahrain.

"It's high risk, this. If it goes wrong, normally it doesn't go wrong in one race when you are in this position, twice. This is a freak incident.

"We need to keep our heads up. We know we have a good year in front of us. We need to just analyse what actually happened and how can we make it that it doesn't happen again."

Magnussen and Grosjean had earlier made their frustration clear, the Dane telling Sky Sports: "It's just heartbreaking to finish like that."

Grosjean added: "Right now everyone is down and we need to analyse if it's a problem with the guns or a problem with the mechanic.

"We didn't have any problems in winter testing so it's strange. It's a lot of points lost today but if we can repeat that performance we'll forget this very quickly."

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