Kevin Magnussen apologised to Haas immediately after the Canadian Grand Prix for the radio message which led to a slap on the wrist from team boss Guenther Steiner.
In the closing stages of the race Magnussen, who was running two laps behind the leaders, said over radio: « This is the worst experience I have ever had, in any race car, ever. »
The Danish driver had started from the pit-lane after Haas was forced into an overnight rebuild of his car following a heavy crash in qualifying. Race engineer Gary Gannon was quick to remind Magnussen of this, before Steiner stepped in to tell him to stop complaining.
« None of this are happy about this pace, » Gannon said. « The guys stayed up all night to fix the car so let’s bring it home. »
Steiner then interjected: « For us it’s also not a nice experience, it’s enough now, that’s what it means. Enough means enough. »
At the end of the race as he returned to the pit-lane, Magnussen apologised to the team.
« Guys, I’m sorry, I know you’re just as frustrated as I am, sorry, » he said. « And the guys in the garage, big apologies, you done great, as always. »
Explaining why he felt the need to intervene, Steiner said: « I didn’t want an open discussion on the radio, I needed to stop it. I was pretty civilised. If I was to say without thinking, it wouldn’t have been this … We don’t need to do it in public and have all of you laugh at us. »
Steiner praised Magnussen for taking time out to apologise further after the race and said he could understand a driver getting frustrated in a race situation.
« It was good he came over. Everybody is frustrated, the guys work until 3 [o’clock] in the morning and you’re last and second last. It’s not something that motivates you and you don’t need any more discussions how bad it is.
« Everyone is full conscious and what I wanted to avoid is the guy gets beaten down more than he needs to be. After the race, I don’t know if he explained it, he didn’t mean to be critical, he just tried to explain a situation that this was a bad situation, but not blaming anybody.
« When you’re on the other side of the radio, you don’t know that. Maybe I could understand it, but the guys do not know, because they don’t know the full story. He apologised to everybody, which is something a grown up does. We move on, there’s no point to dwell on it. »
Magnussen’s frustrations were a by-product of the work the team conducted overnight — in taking the pit-lane start, the team was free to make any changes it wanted to the car. The team opted for an aggressive set-up to give him a chance of fighting back through the order.
« In the rebuild of Kevin’s car we tried a little bit of a different set-up, because we could, because of the pitlane start. Obviously that didn’t work.
« We know now, at least we learned that one. It wasn’t a conscious choice to make the car worse, the choice was to try to make it better, and it didn’t work. »
It was a miserable afternoon for Haas. Romain Grosjean was caught up in a first-corner collision between Alexander Albon and Carlos Sainz, which relegated him to the back of the field. He finished 14th.
http://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/26946746/the-story-magnussen-radio-rant-apology
