Haas boss Guenther Steiner is more optimistic of the team's potential this weekend at the Spanish Grand Prix.
The American outfit started the year strongly with seventh place in Australia but has fallen back since as tyre issues have dramatically impacted their race pace.
As a result, Melbourne remains their only points finish, leaving them eighth in the Constructors' Championship.
However, the Haas chief is more hopeful that Spain will better suit their car based on their performance in pre-season.
“Barcelona always affords a good point to regroup after the early long-haul races,” he noted in his pre-race preview.
“We’re back in Europe, we’ve got upgrades coming, but you’ve got more to look at with Barcelona because we ran our preseason testing there and the hope is that it all works as it did in pre-season testing.
“We’ve obviously lost a little bit of confidence after the last three race weekends, but we haven’t lost it completely," he added.
“We’re just careful to make predictions although we are cautiously optimistic.”
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The Spanish GP is also known for seeing a shake-up in the pecking order as teams bring improvements to the cars and Haas are no different.
“A lot of parts on the car will change – the front wing, the floor and a lot of the smaller parts, like mirrors. It’s a quite significant upgrade," Steiner explained.
“We know we can qualify well, Barcelona in preseason testing was a very good track for us. We looked very competitive, but we need to show it at a race weekend.
“We want to show everyone how good we should be if we get the tyres to work."
