F1 | Emilia Romagna GP | Magnussen “quite happy” with his result, despite the long pit stop made Haas lose points: “I didn’t want to risk as we were in a good position”
Haas scores points again this weekend, but Kevin Magnussen is convinced his team could have achieved more points if it wasn’t for the slow pit stop he asked for as he wasn’t convinced to take risks
Overall a good weekend for Haas, that manages again to score points this season. Despite the good end, Kevin Magnussen felt a bit guilty for the result. He started strongly - helped by the incident between Ricciardo and Sainz - to run P5 in the early stages.
However, he fell away as the intermediate stint went on, losing places to Valtteri Bottas and George Russell.
The American team managed to get P9 after a bit of struggle after the track dried. Indeed, in the first part of the race, while the track was still wet, Haas seemed to have more pace.
Magnussen himself, said soon after the race: “It was a good race we are happy. At the beginning of the race in intermediates I got down in P5, but the pace was a bit better. I think we were late with the pit stop
”
Magnussen also admits he asked his team to be careful during the phase to switch to dries, as he didn’t want to lose too many points; he was undercut by Vettel before losing out to Tsunoda later in the Grand Prix: “We were a bit slow in the pit stop. I was a bit to slow to react. I told them not to be too fast because I didn’t want to risk as we were in a good position, and I wanted to score points. Then we ended up being too slow and we got undercut by a few drivers.”
Kevin Magnussen is still happy with the job his team is doing this year: “It was a good race, we are happy. We were in the top 10 again. You always have the feeling like you could do better, but these are just things we have to work on. We have the car and we just have to put everything together and continue to score points."
