Kevin Magnussen reveals that a gearbox issue from qualifying hurt him in F1 Emilia Romagna GP as up-shift caused massive headache.
It only took seven corners for it to become evident that Magnussen would be in for a difficult day in the Emilia Romagna GP, the Haas F1 driver having spun early in the first lap as a result of contact with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
The Dane managed to rejoin the race shortly thereafter, and he would recover well by the end of his first stint on the medium tyres. However, after a lap 28 pit stop to switch to the white-striped hard compound, he stagnated in the running order, and when a gearbox issue worsened a headache suffered by Magnussen, the team saw no reason to continue.
The 28-year-old explained that the jolts of each gear change rattled him, causing the headache for which he retired – the issue was there since qualifying, in fact. “We had a problem with the gearbox – we had it yesterday as well on my fastest lap in qualifying,” he said. “The problem came back in the race, it was there from the first lap.
“I was having slow up-shifts, and not only are they slow, it’s also like a big bang every time you up-shift. It seems ok for a couple of laps but then it starts shaking your head crazily. By the end I just had a massive headache – I told the team. I think they felt there was nothing to fight for, so they boxed me.
“I mean, I was spun around at the start and that was really the end of it. I lost so much time getting back on track,” added Magnussen, before acknowledging a silver lining, that one being that he was able to maintain respectable pace regardless of any issues.
“The pace was really good actually, it was better than we had expected – even with the up-shifts that were costing us around half a second a lap. We were much quicker than expected, but, [it was] frustrating,” Magnussen concluded.
Teammate Romain Grosjean did not have a great run either to be only 14th eventually. Team principal, Guenther Steiner, meanwhile, noted that they wanted to change the gearbox but they didn’t wish to incur a penalty to change the sensor.
“A somewhat frustrating Sunday afternoon, but nothing goes our way it looks like at the moment – not just the moment, it’s been a while actually,” he said. “Kevin Magnussen getting together with Sebastian at turn seven, well that put him in a place where there’s not a lot to do. But he caught up pretty well in the end.
“He then had the gearbox issue which we had since after qualifying, but we were not allowed by the FIA to change the sensors without penalty – so that went against us,” he summed up, as Vettel said he couldn’t do much in the incident: “I had a poor exit at Turn 6 and then he didn’t really give me enough space, I wanted to avoid him and obviously we touched.”
Here’s the video of the contact between Kevin Magnussen and Sebastian Vettel: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2020/11/2020_Emilia_Romagna_Grand_Prix__Magnussen_spins_after_Vettel_contact.html
Here’s what happened with Valtteri Bottas due to the clash
