Magnussen expecting Haas to be back on form in Canada

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After a disappointing outing for Haas in Monaco, Kevin Magnussen is hoping to be back up to speed in next weekend's Canadian Grand Prix.

Magnussen and his team mate Romain Grosjean were the slowest cars in qualifying in Monaco, and ended up out of the points. It's the third time this year that Haas has gone without scoring in a race this season.

But the Dane says that there is reason for optimism as they head to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal.

"There are some good places for overtaking with long straights. It usually offers up a very interesting race," he said.

The race will see the second appearance of Pirelli's new pink hypersoft tyre after its début in Monaco. Haas struggled with the compound last week but Magnussen believes the right lessons have now been learned.

“Of course, we learned a bit about the hypersoft tyre in Monaco. We’re going to try and work with that information and get the best out of the tyre in Canada.

“I think the hypersoft tyre is a good tyre, though in Monaco I think it was still too hard," he said. "It was difficult to switch on.

"Hopefully, in Canada it will be a little bit easier. You’ve got longer straights to put load on the tyres at high speed to switch them on."

Tyre temperature issues were an issue for Haas in Monaco, but that's unlikely to be the case again next week.

“It wasn’t particularly warm in Monaco," Magnussen said. "I think that tarmac was about 40 degrees. Sometimes it can be the same in Montreal [but] I don’t think it’s going to be too big a factor.”

Haas VF-18 to receive first major update in Montreal

Magnussen is also looking forward to Has first major upgrade package to the VF-18 being rolled out in time for the next race.

“In FP1 we’re going to do some aero running to get numbers on the aero sensors," he revealed. "[We'll] get a correlation check from the real car and the CFD and wind tunnel model.

"I don’t think we’re going to do anything unusual. I think we’re just going to do the normal thing, as we always do in FP1."

One thing that's no longer a concern for Haas is the brakes package. The team had issues throughout 2017 with braking, but Magnussen confirmed that this was no longer the case in 2018: "Yes, no problems with brakes."

Which is just as well, because Montreal is one place that you don't want to be worrying about brakes - especially going into the final chicane and the infamous Wall of Champions.

"It’s a really challenging part of the track," agreed Magnussen. "It’s probably the most difficult corner on the track, and it’s the last corner, so there’s a lot of pressure when you get to the chicane.

"You’ve done almost the whole lap, and if you’re on a good lap, there’s lots of pressure to get this part right, as well.

"It’s always a corner where if you haven’t got a perfect lap, you can try and make it up in that last chicane. [But] if you’re on a good lap, you might not want to take as much risk in that last chicane!"

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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.