Paul Gustard struggled to find any positives after Harlequins suffered a 49-7 thrashing at the hands of Racing 92 in the Heineken Champions Cup.

Teddy Thomas opened the scoring at the Stoop after three minutes for the visitors as the Top 14 outfit - and last season’s finalists - raced into a commanding 20-0 lead at the half-time interval.

Racing stretched their lead to 35-0 after the restart before Quins grabbed a consolation through Scott Steele, only for the French side to score two more tries to take their tally to seven.

The result means Quins’ hopes of progressing to the knockout phases are as good as over and Gustard said some tough questions now need to be asked of his players.

“We were off in the warm-up, we were quiet in the warm-up,” he said.

“There was no talk, no noise, no energy. We’ve got to put our finger on why the boys weren’t quite there. We’ll look at our preparation and our training runs on Friday and ask some questions.

“The players will give some answers. It’s the responsibility of the coaches to prepare the players physically, emotionally and mentally, but there’s also the accountability for the players to bring physical intent and show pride in wearing the badge.

“Collectively as a coaching and player group it wasn’t good enough. We saw the consequences of that in the first half. It was just a really, really poor performance by us and we were well beaten.”

Quins were looking to bounce back after losing their European opener to Munster but got off to the worst possible start when Thomas punched a hole through the defence to land the first blow.

Maxime Machenaud extended the visitors’ lead with a penalty before Kevin le Guen burrowed over to give the home side a mountain to climb as they went into the break.

Tries from Simon Zebo and Georges-Henri Colombe secured the bonus point for Racing and while Steele responded for Quins, Teddy Baubigny and Francois Trinh-Duc gave the visitors the last word.

And Gustard admitted that his side were often architects of their own downfall.

“It’s disappointing that we just didn’t perform,” he said. “We’re out of the competition, we’ve lost two games. Racing are a very good team but we were also the architects in many ways.

“The field position, indiscretions in midfield not allowing our defence to function. And we gave away away quite a few penalties and the maul tries.

“There wasn’t one facet of the play where we performed and obviously the result hurts.

“There’s a lot of upset people in the changing room, myself and the coaches included. It’s not easy to lose heavily. We played against a team that were very good and we were anything but.”