It's hard to know what the biggest shock of the Formula 1 season has been so far for Haas.
Was it that its car proved so bad in Australia that team boss Ayao Komatsu initially thought something must have been broken on it, or that just one week later in China his team produced an instant response to deliver one of the most impressive turnarounds of recent years?
From being well adrift of the field in Albert Park, Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman took their cars by the scruff of the neck in Shanghai to execute a brilliant one-stop strategy and both come home in the points.
There was an extra bonus later when Ferrari's double disqualification helped move the two Haas cars up to fifth and eighth.
But despite its point tally lifting it to sixth place in the constructors' championship, ahead of Aston Martin and just three points behind Ferrari, Haas is not pretending it is out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination.
Team boss Komatsu in particular thinks that the reality of Haas's situation can be outlined in quite simple terms: Melbourne exposed a major car weakness that still needs sorting, while Shanghai served to mask it.
Bouncing and oscillations
The problem with the VF-25 is an aerodynamic oscillation in high-speed corners. This manifests itself in the car not delivering consistent levels of downforce through the quick stuff - which leaves Ocon and Bearman either extremely on the edge or extremely slow.
It is not a lack of ultimate downforce with the design, as all of Haas's windtunnel and factory data points to this car being a step on from last year's challenger.
However, the drivers can't make use of this extra performance because the aero levels are oscillating - gaining and losing downforce to sap the confidence they need in the quick corners. You can throw a bit of bouncing on top of the problem too.
This was highlighted by Melbourne's high-speed Turn 9/10 sequence being such a disaster - as Ocon was losing three-to-four tenths through there. Things were made worse in Australia too by the bumpy track, and a compression through Turn 10 that made the car even more troublesome.
The majority of the factors that hurt it so much at the season opener were not present last weekend.
So while Haas arrived in China with no changes to its car, there were two aspects that contributed to its progress.
Weaknesses masked
The first was a supreme effort in the days after Australia to get on top of what had gone wrong, and work out what could be done with the set-up to at least minimise the effects until more permanent modifications can be made.
As Ocon said: "From the words of Ayao, we didn't sleep much and we didn't eat much, because we couldn't.
"But it was worth it; a lot of meetings, a lot of thoughts, a lot of honesty between everyone as well. And everyone put their heart out there in all these meetings to try and find solutions.
"We knew there was potentially some more to unlock. I didn't think there was going to be that much to unlock - but it's very good news that there is more even now to unlock."
The second aspect, which has left the team cautious about reading too much into its Shanghai uplift, is that the circuit layout and the new surface helped flatter its car.
The track does not have the type of on-the-edge, near-out flat corners like Albert Park's Turn 9/10 where the VF-25's problem rears its heads the most.
Furthermore, with Shanghai's resurfacing making the track one of the smoothest on the calendar, Haas could run the car much closer to the ground than it could in Australia - and that put it in a much happier place.
Speaking to The Race after Haas's double-points finish in China, Komatsu said he was not getting too excited just yet, because he knew that his car still was far from where it should be.
"We haven't fixed it," he said. "It's the circuit's characteristics here that masks our weakness, but we got most out of it.
"And this is why we have got to fix the issue. Nothing changes from today's result what we're doing back at home.
"That Melbourne issue, we still have to fix it. And Suzuka is not going to be as easy as this, no way. I don't think it's going to be as bad as Melbourne, but it could be, right?"
Much will depend on whether or not Suzuka's resurfaced parts are silky smooth.
Keeping faith
The breathing space before Japan will at least allow Haas to work on the first development parts that it thinks are needed to help cure what is going wrong - even if a wider update may well be needed further down the road.
And while everyone at Haas was shellshocked by just how bad Australia had been, Komatsu said he has total faith that the team can work out what has happened and get on top of it.
The key now is chasing solutions, not wasting time trying to figure out who was to blame for what went wrong.
"There is no finger-pointing culture, but it's a fine balance between not addressing the issue and also motivating people, right?" he said.
"What I have said to the guys is you are the same people who managed to develop that amazing VF-24 right? You did that Silverstone upgrade, the Austin update that was amazing.
"And OK, we missed something during winter to cause that problem that we encountered in Melbourne. We have the same people, so I believe in their capability.
"But it just doesn't change the fact that we have got to really work hard together to find a solution to what happened in Melbourne."
