Magnussen sad to see McLaren's ongoing struggles

©WRI2

Kevin Magnussen is heading into this weekend's British Grand Prix on a high, after finishing in fifth place last weekend in Austria.

With his team mate Romain Grosjean taking fourth place in Spielberg, it's the Haas team's best result in its short history in Formula 1.

The success has catapulted them into fifth place in the constructors championship, ahead of McLaren and Force India and closing on Renault in fourth.

The American squad's upward trajectory is in stark contrast with the struggles of McLaren, the veteran race team with which Magnussen made his F1 début back in 2014.

"I don’t know the problems they’re facing at the moment but it’s a shame, for sure," said the 25-year-old Dane. "I would say I’m quite surprised [at McLaren's current situation].

"I’ve lost touch with them, I don’t talk to them any more," he added.

"When I was there it was very clear that it’s a great team, a very big team and beautiful team."

Magnussen said he found it remarkable that a new team like Haas operating on a shoestring budget should be capable of outperforming one of the sport's most iconic marques.

"I’m happy for us that we can compete with them and beat them at times. But for sure it’s not where they [McLaren] belong.

"It’s an impressive thing for such a small team [as Haas] to be competing against the likes of Renault and McLaren, beating Williams," he said. "Even Force India is quite a bit bigger than us."

Gene Haas keeping his team's excitement in check

Magnussen is hoping that he and Haas will be able to extend their run of success at Silverstone. In three outings there to date, he's only finished in the points once - in his rookie season, with McLaren.

“Silverstone is definitely one of the good circuits," Magnussen commented. "It’s really fast and you’ve got some big sections with fast changes of directions. I really enjoy driving the circuit.

“[It's] probably one of the best circuits for these new cars. It’s a real downforce circuit with lots of high-speed corners.

"We all know that high-speed corners are the most impressive in a Formula 1 car, and Silverstone is all about that."

"Silverstone is actually a challenging circuit to overtake," he added. "It’s all so high speed, so it is quite difficult to follow other cars.

"You do have some good straights, so if you’re a good chunk faster, then you will be able to overtake, but it’s not going to be easy.

"You need good high-speed balance as most of the corners are high speed," he said, adding that Silverstone was "mega-fast, a flowing and exciting circuit."

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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.