Haas pit crew had to remove a plastic bag to remove from Kevin Magnussen’s car during the pit stop in F1 Singapore GP.
It was a much better outing for Haas in F1 Singapore GP at Marina Bay Circuit than how their practice session went as team principal Guenther Steiner said that the team were actually racing than filling up.
The team’s fighting performance was derailed for both Romain Grosjean and Magnussen, with the former colliding with Williams’ George Russell and the latter having had plastic bag stuck on his front wing.
Speaking to media including FormulaRapida.net, Steiner said: “It was after the final restart, when he all of a sudden got slower. He drove by a few times and we checked the wing because one of the engineers said we can see a loss of front downforce, and we thought the wing was broken.
“Kevin said ‘I didn’t hit anything, and you could not see it when he was driving by as the wing was up. That is why we made a pitstop, as he lost so much downforce, so he came in and we put new tyres on and took the bag out.
“The tyres were going and the wing loss, so there was no point to stay out there. At least with a new set of tyres we can put a nice lap in and we see what it is. We got the bag which seemed like a sandwich bag.
“I think it was on the left side. It didn’t help because all of a sudden you lose downforce and the car doesn’t work any more. So, would we have been able without the bag to keep the tyres alive? I don’t know.”
Magnussen did set the fastest lap of the race for the second time in a row in Singapore GP, but it didn’t count as he finished 17th and last. The Dane was able to fight cars but was disappointed with the result.
“Unfortunately setting the fastest lap wasn’t worth anything for me,” he said. “We were fighting in the top ten but got unlucky with the safety cars. We’d been working so hard, we were doing such a good job to get into the top ten on merit – it was not with luck or lucky pitstops or anything.
“We had a good first lap and good pace in the car. Then we just had all these safety cars work against us. On top of that we had a plastic bag over the front wing, we had to pit to remove that. It was a disaster from there.
“I really feel bad as it had been a good race and the whole team did such a good job, then we get it taken away from us in a cruel way.” On the other hand, Grosjean finished 11th but had plenty of cars close behind.
His tussle with Russell – which the stewards deemed it as a racing incident – cost him points in the end as he was left with no tyres in the end. Looking at the incident, when asked by FormulaRapida.net, Steiner said:
“I think it is clear as I don’t think Grosjean did anything wrong. George us quite upset about it. He was pretty calm speaking with me. I said, you didn’t need to turn right when he got past, I don’t think Russell got past enough.”
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