'No guarantees' Haas will maintain pace - Magnussen

Kevin Magnussen warns there are "no guarantees" that Haas will be able to repeat their eye-catching pace from the season-opening Australian Grand Prix when Formula 1 heads to Bahrain. Magnussen and Romain Grosjean were fourth and fifth respectively before pit-stops issues led to their retirements.

Haas raised eyebrows during pre-season testing in Barcelona and appeared to have made good on their billing as the fourth-best team in F1 when they locked out the third row of the grid in Melbourne thanks to Valtteri Bottas' Q3 crash and a grid penalty for Daniel Ricciardo.

Magnussen pulled off a fine overtake on Max Verstappen off the line and Grosjean was holding a charging Ricciardo at bay until his race was ended by dodgy wheel-nuts - just two laps after an identical issue caused the Dane's retirement.

Haas' pace has prompted accusations of "cloning" Ferrari's 2017 car - claims they have strenuously denied - and Magnussen is enthused by having an impressive charger underneath him after seasons of struggle at Renault and McLaren before.

"It was good to have a competitive car in Australia. I enjoyed driving the car all weekend," Magnussen said.

"But there's no guarantee we'll be that strong in Bahrain, so we have to work hard to try and understand the car and make sure we carry the performance forward into the next race.

"I'm not taking anything for granted. Again, we have a good car, but I'm cautious. We'll take it one race at a time.

"We try to refocus and look forward to the next one. We take the positives that we can from Australia, which is we have a good car. We take that forward to Bahrain.

"We win together and we lose together. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes – we have to make room for that – but we'll learn from that and improve together."