Guenther Steiner praises Kevin Magnussen for the composure in his comeback F1 season but notes they have to analyse the ups and downs he had.
Haas made a surprise call-up to Magnussen for a F1 return to replace Nikita Mazepin for the 2022 season. The Dane was not renewed when they moved to youngsters but since the move didn’t pay off as they had hoped, they made the change when they got the chance.
Magnussen was pulled out from his endurance deal to make a F1 return and the Dane did justice more or less. He scored points and even secured his and Haas’ first pole in Brazil. But despite that, there were some inconsistency in between.
Especially in the second half, both Magnussen and Haas couldn’t eke out the performance they had hoped to. Steiner notes that they will have an analysis on that part while commending the job done by the Dane in his comeback season.
“I think when he came back in, he scored points on the first test, he had the team behind him,” said Steiner. “And then I would say, just after the summer break, he struggled a little bit and we don’t really know why. But then he came back here, you know, so it’s just a little bit that we need to get the ups and downs out of the team.
“I wouldn’t say only of Kevin, you know. We need to analyse why we have so many ups and downs and we did some of this job. And hopefully next year we can come back more stable, you know, that you have got a good performance most of the time. You always have got a bad event or something, but we just need to stabilise everything.
“And for him, as well, coming back to the form. All of a sudden he’s back in here, it’s a long schedule, a lot of races, but he now handles it well. And I think I really look forward to next year now. He’s just matured, you know, by getting older. We all get calmer and see things sometimes a little bit differently, you know. He’s most of the time very relaxed about things, you know, and now with the combination of Mark now with him I hope in the future we will see even a better Kevin,” summed up Steiner.
Here’s Guenther Steiner on picking Nico Hulkenberg
Here’s Sebastian Vettel winning for his move on Kevin Magnussen
Here’s Kevin Magnussen on Nico Hulkenberg