Haas finally had reason to cheer after getting both cars into the top 10 in qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix.
On a day when the midfield order was turned on its head, Romain Grosjean scored an impressive eighth with teammate Kevin Magnussen 10th, the first double Q3 since Spain.
Both will also start one place higher after Charles Leclerc’s grid penalty and after a rough period which has seen the American outfit fall to score since Sochi, Saturday provided a much-needed boost.
“It was a brilliant job by the team,” Grosjean said via Crash.net. “Having both cars in Q3 is unbelievable.
“Tomorrow might be a different day, but that doesn’t matter, we’ll take the pleasure from today.
“We didn’t really get to show the speed we had in final practice but I had confidence that we might be around P11.
“Then obviously Q2 went really well, and Q3 wasn’t too bad. We were only two-hundredths of a second off being best-of-the-rest.
“I’m happy for the team, it’s a brilliant job from everyone.”
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Since the summer break, Haas have been focusing on seeking solutions to their problems, which saw the development of the VF-19 take a very wrong turn.
But on Saturday, everything just happened to fall in place.
“It’s good to have both cars in Q3 again,” Magnussen added. “It looks like we might have something to fight with this weekend, which is really good.
“There’s nothing to be disappointed about from today. The circuit and conditions were right for our car. It’s been very up-and-down all the way through the year, so it’s not a surprise that we can do this.
“I’ll be more surprised if we can finish it off tomorrow, we know we struggle a little bit with tyre management in the race. We’ll certainly be giving it our all though.”