The Haas Formula 1 team ha🔴s put “a lot of emphasis”💧 on its pit stop practice to avoid a repeat of the issues it suffered in last season’s Australian Grand Prix.  

Romain Grosjean and ♔Kevin Magnussen looked set to finish inside the top five in the 2018💜 season-opener before a pair of botched pit stops forced both drivers into retirement. 

Team principal Günther Steiner revealed the American squad has been putting in a lot of work over the winter break𝔍 to ensure it prevents encountering any more pit stop blunders at the start of the 2019 season. 

"We obviously haven't💃 forgotten last year's pitstops in Australia, which went wrong," Steiner explained.

"This year we've put a lot of emphasis on arriving there prꦿepared. We bro𒈔ught a 2018 car to our car build in Italy so we could train every day and work on pitstops.

"We did the same in Barcelona, as ⭕the current c๊ar is not always available for pitstop practice when you test. Every day the whole crew practiced around 10 to 12 pitstops a day.”

Haas is looking to build on its fifth-place finish in the 2018 constructors’ championshi🌞ps and looked to😼 be in strong shape throughout pre-season testing, despite facing a number of reliability setbacks. 

Grosjean played down concerns over re𒁃liability heading into the new campaign and said 💙he is feeling confident about the team’s chances. 

“⭕The most important thing was to get a good feeling in the car early on,” Grosjean added. “When you get that good feeling, yo♈u know the car is well born. 

“That’s❀ important to start the season – to be able to start on a high. Reliability, we had a few issues, but we’ve been working well to sort them out. I believe we’re now ready to attack the first race in Austr𓆉alia. 

“Obviously, there’s always more and more you want to do, but the🍌n it’s becoming circuit-specific. Now it’s about getting the baseline setup in Melbourne and then fine tuning for Bahrain, China and so on.”

Asked to describ𝔍e Haas’ VF-19 compared to its predecessor, the Frenchman replied: “It’s very sexy. It’s a beautiful car. It handles very well🍎. The feeling in the car is better than it was last year. 

“I think the team has done a really good job on its understanding of the new front🍌 wing and getting ready for the season to start. I’m really looking forward to driving the car on different kinds of circuit♊s.”