While Mick Schumacher was unlucky with his damaged car in Austin and didn’t score points, Kevin Magnussen was able to implement a courageous strategy from his Haas team and finished ninth, from which after the protest against Alpine after the Formula 1 race was an eighth place.
Magnussen was left out on his medium tires and had to complete 38 laps on them. “When Kevin said that he thought he could make it to the end of the race on these tires, we asked ourselves whether that could really work,” says team boss Günther Steiner, looking back on the race.
It wasn’t just about whether the tire would last that long, but more importantly whether it would have the necessary pace long enough not to drop out of the points because the degradation was too great.
According to Steiner, they had a backup strategy to bring the Dane in as early as possible on soft tires if they saw that the lap times were going to be too bad.
Magnussen’s lap times were watched with interest at the command post. “That was pretty nerve-wracking,” says Steiner, “because we knew that we would then fall back to tenth place.”
Steiner certifies Magnussen “a great job”
“But Kevin did a great job setting fast lap times while not overstraining the tyres,” praised the team boss.
In the end there could have been a better position for Magnussen if he hadn’t been overtaken by Sebastian Vettel in an exciting fight in the final sector. Everyone in the Haas garage was also excited about the duel, but the team wasn’t too disappointed that the place had to be given up.
“Even if you sometimes lose a fight, it was fulfilling that we made the decision to stay out,” says Steiner. “We had the confidence to do that, so overall it went well.”
Thanks to eighth place in Austin and the first points since Austria, Haas is two points clear of AlphaTauri in the Constructors’ Championship. With three races to go, the American racing team is eighth in the championship.