Haas delivering what I signed up for - Grosjean

Romain Grosjean says Haas has been delivering exactly what he expected from the team when he opted to join at the start of its time in Formula 1.

Haas entered F1 at the start of last season, with Grosjean having been confirmed as its first race driver toward the end of 2015. Having scored points in its first season, Haas is showing greater consistency this year and has already matched its 2016 points tally as it fights for fifth place in the constructors' championship.

"A very good feeling," Grosjean said when summing up the first half of the season. "We've achieved quite a lot compared to last year. Same amount of points, without the failure in Melbourne we would have six or eight more points, so we are in a good place.

"The team is growing up – we've shown that in year two where everyone was expecting us to dive down, we have actually stepped up our game. So I am very pleased with that, [it matches] as far as I was hoping and what we are getting since I signed back in 2015."

Asked if Haas was delivering above expectations, Grosjean replied: "We are on target, on expectation.

"We wanted to fight in the midfield; we sometimes we are ahead, sometimes we are a bit behind. I think generally there are a lot more things we can improve and there is lot more room for improvement in the team, which is great to know because we are not fully at 100 percent potential."

While Grosjean (pictured at right, below, with chief race engineer Ayao Komatsu) has a sixth place to his name this season, Haas has also failed to score on four occasions and the Frenchman admits there is no obvious pattern in terms of which tracks suit its car.

"It's a tricky one. I think we are ahead when we get the tires to work. It's just most of our time spent on this, when we get them to work and we are in the window then the car feels really good and we are fast. Whenever we are not, it's a more difficult time."

Team owner Gene Haas has already indicated that Haas will retain the current driver line-up of Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen for 2018.