Nyck de Vries, Kevin Magnussen played down their contact in F1 Canadian GP after the stewards too didn’t blame anyone.
Both the Haas cars were involved in a big tussle at separate occasions but largely them going backwards due to lack of consistent race pace in F1 Canadian GP and high degradation. There were trains forming behind them on most occasions.
AlphaTauri’s de Vries too find himself stuck behind Haas’ Magnussen with Mercedes’ George Russell chasing after the Brit’s wall hit. As the Dutchman tried a move at Turn 1, there was no space as they both went wide, allowing Russell to sneak past them.
The two then continued on and on the approach to Turn 4, the two touched after locking-up and went straight ahead. They then had to reverse back to rejoin at the back of the pack. The stewards didn’t put blame on either drivers and termed it as racing incident.
“The Stewards reviewed positioning/marshalling system data, video and in-car video evidence,” said the FIA note. “Into Turn 3, Car 21 on the inside locked up and went straight ahead. At the same time Car 20 turned in. A minor collision occurred. We consider no driver was predominantly to blame.”
Both de Vries and Magnussen were fine too with hard racing as neither didn’t blame each other for the move. “I think it was a kind of decent race up until that point,” said the Dutchman to media. “I guess we were just racing each other hard through Turns 1-2.
“And I undercut and I was on the kind of dirt, pushing each other hard into that braking point, and I locked up and went straight. Kind of a racing fight and incident and that’s it. I felt like he had the momentum and I thought I kind of had him.
“But then he kind of almost went for the grass, on the kerb to get me back. We were just fighting. I guess that’s racing. But I think as a team, we’re just lacking a little bit overall in terms of competitiveness and pace.
“We’ll see where we can improve and come back at the Red Bull Ring. Quite a few of our competitors brought updates this weekend. So we’ll need to see and understand where we are relative to them and hopefully we’ll be back in Red Bull Ring,” summed up de Vries.
Interestingly, Magnussen was of similar view. “He was racing pretty hard, that’s for sure. But who am I to complain about that?” he said. “I think the problem was he missed his braking in Turn 3 and took me with him. That was it.
“He had the inside but then outbraked himself and couldn’t make the corner. I was on the outside, so I was blocked, and we ended up on the run-off with him. That was unlucky for me,” summed up Magnussen.
Here’s incident between Nyck de Vries and Kevin Magnussen: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2023-canadian-grand-prix-magnussen-and-de-vries-end-up-down-escape-road-after-collision.1769070123460516247.html
