Given the option, Kevin Magnussen would rather be with Haas and overachieve than with one of F1’s big teams, such as McLaren and Williams, and be underperforming.

This season Haas are on course to finish fifth in the Constructors’ Championship as they trail Renault by 24 points heading into the final race of this season.

It could have been a different story had the team not made mistakes at the start of this season such as their double DNF in Australia, the result of two botched pit stops.

However, overall it has been a great season for Haas and especially Magnussen, who until recently was in the running to finish best of the rest in the championship.

P8 is now a more realistic target as he trails Nico Hulkenberg by 14 points.

Magnussen, though, has no complaints about his or Haas’ season.

“As a team, we’re doing better and better,” he said. “We’re learning as we go.

“For us, we’re such a new team, performing at such a high level already, sometimes we’re a bit short of experience for the performance levels being achieved.

“We’re fighting big, experienced teams like Renault, McLaren, Williams and, as a new team, sometimes it’s hard to avoid mistakes because of a lack of experience.

“I’d rather be in an inexperienced team overperforming than in an experienced team underperforming.”

With 55 points on the board, the Dane has matched his tally from 2014 when he entered Formula 1 with McLaren.

He’s hoping for more next season.

“I think 55 points is good for a midfield team, but I still think there was potential for more this year. That’s both a positive and a negative.

“Positive, because we’ve showed we have great potential in the team to do more, but of course, it’s always disappointing not to get everything out of it as you could.

“We’re learning as a team and next year we’ll have even more experience. We’ll have learned a lot from this year and, hopefully, we can do a bit more next year.”

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