Haas find themselves in esteemed company with Mercedes and Ferrari as the only teams to have got both cars into the top 10 all three qualifying sessions so far in 2019. But come race day, they went backwards in Bahrain and then again in China, with Team Principal Guenther Steiner blaming the woe on the way their car uses its tyres.

There was a big inkling something was wrong when Kevin Magnussen spoke of disappointing race pace during the long runs in Friday practice at Bahrain – and that was confirmed on Sunday in the Grand Prix. A productive test in Sakhir followed, with the team suggesting they had identified the problem.

But with the end of the test on Wednesday and the team arriving in China early the following week, there was very little time to find a solution and implement it. As a result, it was a case of déjà vu in Shanghai, as both Magnussen and Romain Grosjean fell away.

“The car’s amazing over one lap, but as soon as we go two laps on the tyres, we’re not there anymore,” said Grosjean. “We need to understand exactly what happened.”

Magnussen added: “It’s frustrating that we see we’ve got a good car, that can qualify well, then we can’t convert that into race pace.”