Haas chief Guenther Steiner responded to a "perfect weekend" at the Austrian Grand Prix by boldly claiming his team can "soon" be on the podium.
The American team endured a miserable time last year, failing to score a single point as they, in truth, were simply there to make up the numbers. There were also concerns that the team might go under completely amid funding issues.
Things look much more rosy for Haas these days, though. Their budget remains comparatively tiny for a Formula 1 team, but their on-track fortunes have been revived thanks to a much more competitive car.
They hit the ground running early on as Kevin Magnussen marked his surprise return to F1 with a healthy haul of points in Bahrain. Mick Schumacher took a little longer to warm up, but has now found form with points in back-to-back races.
Haas have 34 points for the year now, and sit seventh in the standings. That position, along with having both drivers in the top 10 last time out in Austria, has charismatic chief Steiner grinning like a Cheshire cat – and making bold predictions about what might be next for his team.
"I would say it's an almost perfect weekend, there's always margin to do better in racing until you win everything, but nobody wins everything all of the time," he said of his drivers' results in Austria. "It was a very good weekend and everything was executed as best as we could.
"There were no real mistakes, nothing done wrong. Every little step can be better so we move up and one day, hopefully coming soon, we'll get a podium. To pull this together it's a bunch of people working hard, there's no secret, it's just everybody doing their job."
But even if that ambitious dream of a top-three finish does not come true this year, Steiner will be happy if his team can secure their current position in the constructors' championship to seal a much bigger slice of that all-important prize money than they might have been expecting before the season began.
"I don't want to get ahead of myself, but if we can keep seventh, or to end up sixth – it would be nice," he added. "I think anything above sixth will be very difficult because the other teams are very good and they're a little bit far ahead, but we just need to keep on working hard and maybe we can achieve sixth. First of all, we need to make sure that we stay seventh."
