Haas had to resort to black flagging their drivers after communication issues during first practice in Monaco.
The stewards would show the flag usually reserved for disqualification to both Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean during their first runs, immediately leading to speculation of a problem with the American outfit.
However: "We had an issue with the IT equipment, we had no data anymore, no radio, nothing," team boss Guenther Steiner explained.
"We put the pit board out, but they didn’t see it, so we came up with the idea to ask race control to give them the black flag so they come in. That’s what we did.
"Everybody got a bit too excited about it, but we got a little bit creative there, and asked for some help to get them focused to come in. They got in, we fixed the problem and then they got out for the last 20 minutes.”
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Once able to get going, Haas showed decent performance with Magnussen in the top 10 in both sessions.
“It wasn’t too bad of a Thursday, between us we also ran on all the tyre compounds today, so that’s good,” the Dane said.
"The car feels good in low-fuel, so we’ll see what we can do for tyre management. It’s a tough track to overtake on, so it’s not the main priority, but of course, we want to be fast in race runs. So far everything’s going okay, and hopefully, Q3’s a possibility."
Grosjean was just outside the top 10 in P11, but the Frenchman does see the potential to move up nearer to his teammate.
"It’s been a good day. We didn’t really know what to expect coming here – obviously, last year here, it wasn’t our strongest race. I was open-minded to what we could get,” he commented.
"I’m quite happy with the way the car was. We possibly didn’t quite choose the right set-up for FP2, but we tried something which was interesting. Now we can analyze all the data for Saturday. I think we should be in the mix for a good qualifying."
