McLaren's Carlos Sainz believes Haas holds a significant advantage in the midfield to start 2019.

Despite a very competitive battle between as many as six teams in Australia, the American outfit sat as 'best of the rest' with Kevin Magnussen claiming sixth in the race.

And having had the past two weeks to evaluate, the Spaniard is worried the gap the rest has to make up could be too big for the rest of the season.

“Haas, they are a bit too far ahead in the midfield for everyone else,” he said on Thursday. “That is the only bad thing compared to last year.

Also Read:

• Sainz encouraged by Renault engine gains despite Australia failure
• Sainz pins McLaren's season on delivering positive upgrades

“It is more than half a second, to close a gap of half a second even in a high development rate this season it would be a very difficult task.

“They won’t stand still so you need to develop at least seven or eight tenths which is a lot of lap time and my estimate is it is going to be very difficult to end the year in front of Haas in qualifying.

“I wouldn’t say [the gap is as big] in a race, but in pure pace, it is going to be very difficult for anyone [to catch them]."

McLaren does appear to be more competitive though, with Lando Norris starting eighth and was unlucky to drop to 12th.

The only issue for Sainz is his year is already compromised after an MGU-K was destroyed in his engine failure in Melbourne, leaving him with just one left before a penalty will be applied.

"Hopefully they [Renault] are looking at it, and they have been looking at it during these last few days, and they’ve found out hopefully the cause of the issue," he commented.

"We have put some solutions in place for this race, and if they will work or not we need to see. But it is true we had a couple of failures during testing, so it is something that is a weak point of the car.

"We need to keep working on to ensure we don’t throw any more points into the bin because we did throw a couple of them in Australia."