The Haas F1 Team continued their fine run in the 2018 Formula 1 German Grand Prix after qualifying in the Top 6 with both cars, but Kevin Magnussen doesn’t want to challenge the faster Red Bull Racing cars.
The Dane is fifth behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen with teammate Romain Grosjean in sixth leading the two Renaults of Nico Hulkenberg and Carlos Sainz. The Haas is in the fight with Renault for fourth place in the constructors’ championship.
And so, Magnussen reckons it will be better off for Verstappen and even the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers tp pull away so that the American outfit can race freely in the cleaner air than get stuck behind a train of cars damaging their performance.
“That’s not really the target [to get Red Bull],” he started. “They are too fast, so what we want is for them to just leave us alone. [It will be better if they] pull away, so that we can have a clean race.
“[In qualifying] there was no beating the Red Bulls – they’re still too far ahead for us to play with them, but we’re best of the rest again, and that’s our target. We just need to get it [on Sunday] as well, which is the bigger challenge.
“[Also] we’re lucky that it’s looking like the temperatures will be a little bit cooler. With the problems we had on Friday with the overheating of the tires, maybe it’ll be a bit better. Hopefully, the car will behave well and we can score some good points.”
Grosjean also hopes for a cooler temperature which he thinks will help the Haas cars. As per the current weather predictions, the race will start under cloudy conditions and thunderstorms are expected after 50 minutes of the start.
With Renault behind, it will be a good opportunity for Haas to score more points and close the gap between them and Renault which currently is 19 points. They will have the faster Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo to give way too but if there’s no major dramas, they would like to finish seventh and eighth respectively.
