Haas' hopes of scoring its best-ever Formula One result at the Australian Grand Prix were ended by two separate human errors, according to team boss Guenther Steiner.
Having started on the third row of the grid, Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean were running fourth and fifth as they approached the first pit-stop window at the end of the first stint. After Magnussen made his planned pit stop, the Danish driver immediately slowed on his out-lap and stopped at Turn 4 -- it soon became clear the left rear tyre was not fitted correctly to his car. The following lap, Grosjean pitted and then slowed to a halt at Turn 2, with his front left tyre fitted incorrectly.
Steiner, who was shown on the TV world feed burying his head in his hands after Grosjean's retirement, admitted a lack of pit-stop practice was likely to be the team's undoing.
"It's high risk this," Steiner said. "If it goes wrong, normally it doesn't go wrong in one race when you are in this position, twice. This is a freak incident. We need to keep our heads up. We know we have a good year in front of us. We need to just analyse what actually happened and how can we make it that it doesn't happen again."
He went on to explain the issue in more detail to Racer: "It's just the wheel wasn't on correctly and then it was cross-threaded, both times. It was just really bad luck. We didn't do enough practice, that's what we think. We could have avoided it if we did more practice but we basically didn't have the chance to do it.
"You have some trouble [in practice] but when you do 100 stops then you get it. But to have it in a race twice the focus in a race is much higher than when you do practice. It is unlucky but I think what we need to do is more practice. It's just human error ... [the gunman] was convinced it was good each time and it wasn't."
Steiner was keen to stress the team has made no changes over the winter to its pit-stop crew or its wheel guns and nuts.
"What do you want to change? If we do it one thousand times, there's no point that time to say we'll do it differently because then you make a mess out of it. Therefore it is so unbelievable that it happens [twice]. If it happens twice on the left rear then there is something wrong, but when it happens once on the left rear and then on the left front is unbelievable."
The incidents robbed Haas' drivers the chance of converting the team's remarkably strong weekend into a big haul of points. Magnussen had been running fourth having executed a brilliant pass around the outside of Max Verstappen at Turn 1.
Magnussen said it was hard to process how the race had ended so abruptly.
"A very tough one to swallow for the whole team with both cars not finishing in such good positions with so much anticipation coming up this race and being in such a good position with both cars," he said. "Argh, it's just so heartbreaking to finish like that. We will get on top again and we will fight back and do it all again."
The two incidents, both deemed to be an unsafe release under F1's regulations, earned the team fines of €5000 (about $6,200) for both retirements.