Magnussen "proved a point" with China drive

The Dane parted ways with Renault at the end of 2016 after a single F1 season, with managing director Cyril Abiteboul telling French media Magnussen lacked discipline.

Sources at Renault and McLaren, with whom he raced in 2014, had also questioned his work ethic but Magnussen said his old teams have never given him negative feedback on those areas.

After a messy weekend in Australia, things went much smoother in China, with a solid qualifying, where he missed out on Q3 by just 0.074s, followed by a tidy drive to eighth.

Haas boss Steiner said the result would be a confidence boost, adding: "It's very important for him, especially after last year where in the second half of the season he got a lot of criticism for what he was not doing.

"He proved a point with the result, because he drove a very good race.

"There was nothing wrong with it - it was calm, no mistakes and as good as you can do."

Teammate Romain Grosjean missed out on points in 11th, but Steiner said the team has proven it is capable of scoring with both cars.

"We haven't done the whole analysis, but it seems that the race pace is pretty good," added Steiner, who also said there will be no new parts for this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix.

"In Australia we were a bit careful because it's a special track, but this is a normal track and the car showed what it can do.

"We just need to keep the development pace up because people will start to bring new parts. We missed out [on points] in Australia and in China we missed out with the second car.

"We can now score points with two cars - it doesn't look bad, I would say."