Romain Grosjean described the feeling of his Haas as "outstanding" after finishing P6 in German Grand Prix practice.

As the American outfit try to solve their recent performance problems, the Frenchman has reverted to the same spec car as used in Australia, with that familiarity yielding big results.

Indeed, Grosjean finished a massive 1.3s faster than teammate Kevin Magnussen, using the most upto date package and there was a visual glow when Romain talked about the handling.

“It is the confidence that you have in the car that you can really push it in the high-speed corners and you can really play with it,” he said. “Then in the low speed and entry phase, it is outstanding.

“There is a limitation on the front with understeer but mid-corner and traction is quite good so I guess it is the high speed and entry stability which is good."

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Though it doesn't particularly reflect well on Haas that their initial launch car is so much faster than their current machine, Grosjean put a positive spin on things.

“I think we need to take it positively, we need to take it that the guys have produced a car earlier in the year that was very competitive and very good," he claimed.

“Yes, the upgrade did not work as expected, and we need to understand why things didn’t quite follow the plan, but yes, today’s the car from Melbourne. From winter testing we knew it was a very good car, so that’s a positive.”

The key now for Grosjean and Haas going forward is sustaining it.

“It has been a long time since we have been this competitive on a Friday and things went smoothly so I am happy with that in tricky conditions as it was very warm,” he said.

“We have been working very well and done a lot of tests on the car, more than we have done over the season so far, and had some good answers. Some less clear stuff but we are very happy with our Friday.”

Contrast that to Magnussen, who didn't have a good word to say about the latest attempts by Haas to improve his car.

“I don’t know if there’s stuff that can be done – well, there certainly is stuff that can be done, but we’ll see what that is tonight, and we’ll see tomorrow what it gives," he said.

“It looked like a very big gap today and it’s not what you want to see when you’re bringing new upgrades. You want to make progress.

“Initially it didn’t seem like it has done that and it was the same with the upgrade for Barcelona.

“But we have to pursue knowledge and try to understand why these upgrades that were meant to be better, weren’t.”