Eradicating "awful" days key to Haas in 2018 - Magnussen

While the American team has scored regularly throughout this season, there have been times when it has struggled for pace thanks to a lack of performance.

Magnussen believes that it is improving on the bad days rather than trying to improve its good ones, that should be the focus over the winter.

"It has been a season of ups and downs," said the Dane. "Performance-wise some races we have been very good, and at other races, we have been pretty poor. So next year we need to try to find more consistency.

"We don't necessarily need to focus on our highs because they are quite high. We just need to raise the lower bar so we don't have those awful weekends."

Magnussen suggested that some of the inconsistency in Haas's performance comes from the fact that it does not have the huge numbers of staff that big money rivals have.

Asked about where he felt the team's weakness was, he said: "I think it is a general understanding of the car that perhaps isn't strong enough. And also tyres, we don't have any specific tyre specialists.

"We have people in the team who have a lot of experience but their expertise isn't tyres, it is engineering, vehicle dynamics and aerodynamics.

"We need some specific tyre people and then also a better general understanding of the aero, our maps and correlation."

However, Magnussen believes that being a smaller outfit does hand Haas some advantages when it comes to being able to react quicker or not get dragged down by politics.

"It is lacking in size of course compared to the teams I've been to previously, but it has a lot of strength in other areas," he said.

"You really have a lot of synergy in the team and everyone is working together, whereas I found in other teams, big teams, that you have the different departments growing very big.

"So sometimes they have a hard time agreeing and finding a direction because one department wants this because they are aero and the other department wants this because they are vehicle dynamics.

"It can become a challenge when you have a massive team.

"You have strengths that outweigh the challenges, but I feel like there is some strength as well by being small and being one team where everyone is working together."