Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner says their performance during Formula One's opening pre-season test in Spain had exceeded all expectations. 

The American team clocked a total of 281 laps around the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and were dealt with just one insignificant problem across the four days. 

Romain Grosjean suffered a front wing failure along the main straight on day one but the Frenchman managed to return to the track later that afternoon, before posting the second-best time on the third and penultimate day. 

Steiner was happy with the team's first run in F1 especially after expecting a more problematic start to their debut season.

"We are pretty happy with the progress we have made, we didn’t anticipate that we would get all this running - to do a whole race distance was pretty cool today," he told Formula1.com.

"We have a pretty long list of what we have to fix, but we are working on it - there are trucks leaving in the next few hours to fix things. And it’s not like we are saying ‘woah, how do we fix this?’, so we are in pretty good shape.

"That gives a good feeling. Sure we would have liked to have fewer problems, but we expected to run less, to be honest.

"I am a little surprised [by how smoothly it has gone] - but we had our work cut out too. I wouldn’t call the front wing smooth, that was not enjoyable on the first day.

"But I am positive because of how well we recovered from it. We had a solution and in the afternoon we were out again.

"We did some measures, and the next day we were up on top speed again.

"I am very happy with how it went, let’s put it like that."

The former Jaguar and Red Bull Racing technical director was also impressed with how quickly the team had begun working together.

"I am quite positively surprised with how quickly the team has gelled. The mechanics got used to the car quickly, and you can see the difference between days one and four - you can measure it," he said.

"Things can go wrong - we need to practice pit stops a bit more, because the reality is a different story to doing it in the garage. 

"It is a new experience for the guys [and] our biggest enemy is that we make mistakes just because we are inexperienced.

"But we have a lot of confidence, a lot of data. We are in pretty good shape."