Haas doubt whether they can continue closing the gap to the top teams in 2019.
Much like last year, the American outfit has started the season as the fourth best team with Kevin Magnussen finishing sixth in Australia.
However, with their title sponsor Rich Energy having aspirations of taking on Red Bull, the Dane doubts they will be a realistic target.
“It’s still going to be very difficult to reach Red Bull as they’re already quite a big chunk ahead of us," Magnussen was quoted by F1i.com.
"And they usually evolve and develop quite well over the season, even compared to the two other top teams of Mercedes and Ferrari."
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Instead, K-Mag believes the focus should be on securing what would be their best ever Constructors' Championship position of fourth.
“I think it’s going to be close again, like last year," Magnussen noted. "It’s obviously difficult to say what the battle’s going to be like for the rest of the year, but at least in Australia, it was very close.
"It looked a lot like last year, maybe even closer."
Also interesting was the closeness between Haas and Ferrari, the team with which they have a close association, with Romain Grosjean and Magnussen within a second of Sebastian Vettel.
"Yes, but I think Ferrari had a particularly bad weekend and I don't think this will be the norm," team boss Guenther Steiner commented.
"But that was the aim — to get closer to the top and not just move away from the others, because you'd do that automatically. We are in a good way we just need to keep it up."
