Haas explains its 'play with fire' failed Chinese GP Q3 strategy

The Haas drivers were at the back of a gaggle of cars on track together as the clock wound down.

They were greeted by the chequered flag at the end of their preparation laps before they could start runs, as were Red Bull drivers Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly.

Unable to set Q3 times, Magnussen and Grosjean will start ninth and 10th.

Steiner said Haas waited as late as possible in order to get the optimum track conditions to aid the team's battle for grid position with Renault - but Grosjean and Magnussen were caught out because so many cars were coming down the pitlane that they had to wait and could not break into the queue.

"Obviously afterwards you could always do it better," Steiner told Autosport.

"But I think in the position we are we need to take this risk because otherwise you end up last anyway. Doing it any differently, the outcome wouldn't be any different.

"We are in a difficult position having the last garage of the people in Q3. It's like a zip effect, you cannot go in in the middle.

"Once Mercedes starts, everybody came out behind and our guys couldn't get in properly. In the end they bunched up and if you try to overtake and run into somebody, who do you think gets the penalty? In the end there was no point.

"You look forward and they're doing all this backing up and you have no input on that, you are just a passenger."

Asked if the team might be more conservative in the future, he insisted that it had to keep pushing the limits.

"It depends on what the situation is. If you know it's exactly the same situation, you go out early. But how do you know that? You don't know that. You won't be at the same racetrack and everything will be different.

"This is one of the situations where you know consciously that you take a risk and if you take a risk you need to know that if you play with fire you can burn yourself."

Steiner said that it had still been a positive day because both drivers made Q3 once again.

"We don't have to forget that we are, with Ferrari and Mercedes, the only team that made it into Q3 in the first three races with both cars all the time.

"OK, we're ninth and 10th instead of being sixth, seventh or eighth, but still we're in Q3 with both cars on merit and we have to deal with this stuff. We tried to do it better, we took some risks and the risks didn't pay off. Move on."

Grosjean admitted it was "not ideal" to miss out on a Q3 attempt.

"You're the last, furthest away from the leaders," said Grosjean when asked about the situation by Autosport.

"You don't want to be the first one, so you wait for the first cars to come through. But then everyone does the same, and once the queue is going, the queue is going."

Grosjean noted there had been some confusion over the radio: "At Turn 14 they tell me I've got a 20 second margin, it's tight, but go.

"Then next thing it was five seconds. I was like, 'How did that go 20 to five in two seconds?'.

"I think five was very optimistic, because the next thing I look at is the lights and it was all red."