Haas team boss Ayao Komatsu says the points the team has already collected at the United States Grand Prix are huge in the fight for sixth place in the constructors' championship.

Kevin Magnussen finished seventh and Nico Hülkenberg eighth in Saturday's sprint race, giving Haas three points and level on points with RB in the overall standings. Haas sits ahead of RB in sixth place having achieved better finishes in Grands Prix so far this season – two sixth places – and Komatsu says it was already an extremely satisfactory result ahead of today's main event.

“Honestly, getting 7th and 8th in the sprint is amazing,” Komatsu told SiriusXM. “We are the fifth fastest car and if you look at our pace at the end of the sprint against Perez, he was no faster. That was really satisfying. I think we managed it very well, which shows that our race speed is good.

“To be honest we were all a bit discouraged and a bit disappointed in qualifying because Nico should have been back in Q3 but he made a mistake twice in Turn 1. And it wasn't a small mistake, it's four tenths and five tenths. If you then look at his sector 3, he is again one of the fastest, so the potential is there and with Nico's team we haven't exploited it. So it's very frustrating to be eliminated in the second quarter.

“Kevin, I think we have to give him credit. He has adapted very well to the new package. He had the old package until the sprint, so we upgraded his car between the sprint and qualifying because Nico's data was very positive. Kevin said with the new package the car is definitely faster, but you still have to get used to it and he did it very, very well.

“Getting into Q3 was good and in Q3 he was already three tenths ahead, but then we got the yellow flag from Russell so he couldn't improve his lap time. But it was a good performance. And I’m really looking forward to the race because I think we have a good race car.”

Komatsu said the result was even more important because Haas focused on its performance at Sunday's Grand Prix and not on the shorter race.

“It’s huge, absolutely huge. Even at the beginning of the season, or to be honest when we came here for a sprint weekend, we were really focused on the race because in the sprint only the first eight get points, so it's really difficult to score points . So the fact that both cars were actually in the top eight – P7 and P8 – is a testament to everyone's efforts.

“It's really satisfying. It's just a little disappointing that we couldn't keep up in qualifying, but I think it's good to be a little disappointed with P9 and P12 and we can definitely get points with both cars.”