Magnussen has confidence in 'competitive' VF17

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Haas F1's Kevin Magnussen says that he had confidence in this year's car, even though it failed to last the distance in Australia.

Magnussen was forced to retire from the race 11 laps from the end with a puncture and suspension issue. His team mate Romain Grosjean was sidelined by a water leak just 13 laps into the race.

But Magnussen said that reliability wasn't the crucial thing at this point of the season.

"I’d rather have to sort out reliability than sort out an underperforming car. Performance-wise, it’s there. We just need to make it run," he said.

"It’s still very encouraging when you see the car is fast.

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"It’s really good news that the car is as competitive as we had hoped for," he continued. "There’s obviously no guarantee it’s going to be as competitive again.

"We need to work hard to get the most out of it and make it competitive again in China. The car was there, it was performing.

"It was just on my side I had a bit of a tough weekend. I didn’t get enough track time and there were too many issues with reliability that meant I didn’t have a good weekend. It’s positive, though."

Magnussen said he was looking forward to making further progress at next weekend's Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.

"I’d say turn one is pretty good fun," Magnussen pointed out. "It’s a very unique corner where you turn in at very high speed and you end up at very low speed.

"It’s an incredibly long corner and pretty unique for that," he added. “I would say turn one is the only non-traditional element. The rest is pretty straightforward."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.