Haas F1 Team
Nico Hulkenberg
“It was a tricky race – especially the first half. I had contact with someone on lap one which I didn’t really notice so that was a bit frustrating. I had quite a lot missing from the front wing and lost a lot of load and grip with that, and that made the first half of the race very tough. We tried to hang in there, but I was going through my tires like a hot knife through butter, so we decided there was no point in continuing like that and we pitted for a new front wing. We did a race distance though and got lots of good information, so we’ll definitely take that.”
Kevin Magnussen
“I was pleasantly surprised with our race pace. We started P17 but still made up a few positions and it felt like the pace was alright in terms of where we came from. I think we were struggling a lot in testing and on Friday with tire wear and in the race it seemed like we made a step, which is positive. It wasn’t the weekend we dreamed of, but we learned a lot.”
Guenther Steiner, team principal
“The result wasn’t what we expected – Nico didn’t have a great start losing a front wing endplate and Kevin was, in hindsight, on the wrong tire at the start. I think race pace was better than we expected and that’s what we take away from here – there is good potential in the car. We qualified in the top 10 and maybe could even have been in the top eight if everything went perfectly. In the race it didn’t go our way, but we learned a lot and we now know that we’re in the ballpark on race pace like everybody else. We go to Jeddah well prepared, and we’ll see what we can do there – I think points are possible.”
