Grosjean: It’s pretty much a brand new car

The team have opted to give Romain Grosjean a run with the new package first as the team do back-to-back evaluations to the upgrade during free practice in Barcelona tomorrow. Kevin Magnussen will run with the older spec car.

Grosjean told reporters on Thursday, “I’m pretty excited. It’s good to be back in Europe and it’s good to have the first big upgrade on the car. It’s a circuit where we have been testing on, and testing went very well.

"We’re hoping that the performance comes back to us and that we can understand a bit more about what has been happening recently. It’s pretty much a brand new car, even the mirrors have been modified. So it’s a big update. We’re hoping it works well.”

Haas team chief Guenther Steiner explained the reasoning behond running the two cars in different specs, "We will run one car on the old spec and one on the new spec, so we have something to compare. If with the new spec we've got issues, at least we can compare it.

"If you put two cars on the new spec and you have got an issue - is it the tyres or the new spec? So we've got one and one and then we can convert the second car on Friday night if everything goes to plan."

"We've got all the parts. We consciously wanted to have a back-to-back [so as not] confuse us more with the tyre issue," added Steiner with reference to an issue between the American team and Pirelli, the tyre company blaming the VF19 chassis for the incompatibility with their tyres.

But Steiner pulled no punches earlier in the week when he said, “We shouldn’t be talking always about if the tyre works or not. It’s interesting but, no, that’s not Formula 1. Did you get the tyre to work? Yes – then I’m fast. Oh, my tyre didn’t work, then I’m slow."

“We spend millions and millions to develop these cars and then they are out of the [tyre] window and really cannot get going,” lamented the Haas team chief.

Nevertheless, the goal with the upgrade was to resolve the problem their drivers have of not getting heat into the tyres so that they can optimise the grip when the tyres are in the ideal operating window which the Haas cannot seem to find.

Grosjean will be looking to make up for last year's race when he spun and crashed spectacularly through Turn 3 on the opening lap, his race and that of Pierre Gasly (Toro Rosso) and Nico Hulkenberg (Renault).