Nico Hulkenberg left ‘disappointed’ despite ‘promising’ Dutch Grand Prix as Haas admit to strategy blunder

But it was to no avail and when Magnussen eventually pitted, having been the only car to start on the hard compound, he dropped down the field to finish 18th.

“Starting from the pit lane, we knew it was going to be a difficult race and it was,” the Dane said. “I don’t think we had bad pace and although we haven’t come away with much, the pace felt decent – not great, but not bad. Hopefully the next races with more medium downforce levels are going to be good for us.”

Team Principal Ayao Komatsu admitted afterwards that “we didn’t execute our strategy very well,” before continuing to say that P9 or P10 was possible “if we’d had better race execution.”

Fortunately for Haas, their championship rivals RB didn’t manage to score in the Netherlands with the American team remaining just seven points behind in the battle for sixth in the constructors’.