Haas' record return delights Magnussen and Grosjean

Haas duo Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen revelled in delivering the team's best-ever qualifying performance after locking out the third row of the grid for Sunday's Australian Grand Prix. Haas had been tipped to emerge as Formula 1's fourth-best team in 2018, with the early signs appearing to back that up.

Magnussen and Grosjean will start fifth and sixth on Sunday, each driver bumped up a place from their qualifying performance thanks to a grid penalty suffered by Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo.

Valtteri Bottas' crash at the start of Q3 also gave them an extra spot, but they were at least two tenths in front of Renault in Q3, with McLaren going out in Q2 and Force India struggling to replicate their pace of recent seasons.

Magnussen was especially satisfied to have qualified in front of his former teams, Renault and McLaren.

"I'll be extremely happy if I can do it [finish ahead of them] tomorrow," he said.

Awesome #Quali performance from @KevinMagnussen and @RGrosjean finishing #Q3 P6 and P7. Both gain a spot after @danielricciardo penalty applied. P5 and P6 to start #AusGP. pic.twitter.com/UmRnWJtjmu — Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team) March 24, 2018

"I really want to beat those teams, no doubt about it. But it has to be done tomorrow."

With Ricciardo and Bottas making their way through the pack, Magnussen is looking forward to taking on opponents that have been unfamiliar to Haas in their time in F1 so far.

"We have some quick guys behind us, and we'll have to do well to keep it that way," he said.

"We'll be doing all we can to get a good result. We need a solid start to the season and we need to capitalise on today's qualifying result."

Grosjean had endured particular issues with the Haas' brakes in his two years with the team, but was happy to report that the 2018 iteration is exactly to his liking.

"Everyone's very happy and it reflects the hard work from everyone on the team," said Grosjean.

"Our result confirmed a little bit what we saw in winter testing. I can push the car as much as I want, which obviously makes me very happy. It was a good job by Kevin as well – getting both cars into the third row of the grid tomorrow.

"It's going to be pretty amazing being there. Points could be possible. Obviously, we want to keep our positions.

"We're starting in a good place, but we'll see tomorrow what happens. This is a good start. We can be very proud, but we need to keep pushing."