Steiner: 'Sometimes Magnussen has to ruffle feathers'

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Haas boss Guenther Steiner has backed his driver Kevin Magnussen against criticism from other drivers on the grid that the Dane drives too aggressively.

"We want him to race," Steiner told Motorsport.com. "And sometimes you have to ruffle feathers if you want to get something.

"Nobody gives anything for free here," he added.

"People say he does it on purpose. No!" he insisted. "He wants to make a mark, but he doesn't drive aggressively. He doesn't say, 'I'm going to go aggressive here, I'm not a pushover'."

Magnussen memorably clashed with Renault's Nico Hulkenberg in last year's Hungarian Grand Prix, and afterwards told the German to "suck my balls."

And this year he was handed two penalty points for an incident with Pierre Gasly in Azerbaijan, when the Toro Rosso driver dubbed him "the most dangerous" driver on the grid.

Magnussen now having fun in F1 after 'horrific' early years

But that only took him to a total of three penalty points for the last 12 months, compared to seven for his team mate Romain Grosjean. Even Gasly himself has four, one more than Magnussen.

That's something Steiner believes proves that Magnussen is driving within the rules, regardless of the grumbling emanating from other drivers.

"Everybody plays the game here, and you need to," Steiner explained.

"That creates more criticism [from] established drivers: 'Is this young guy coming and wanting to tell me, I cannot get past? I will bitch about it!'

"I'm not critiquing other drivers, they try their best to knock his confidence," he added. "But they don't achieve it."

Steiner says that once they see it's having no effect on Magnussen's race performance, the other drivers will soon drop the tactic.

"A lot of them let go already, because they see there's no point. He's not a pushover anymore."

Magnussen said earlier this year that he doesn't "care what the other drivers think about me" and kept away from websites and social media comment.

However he was forced to clarify comments about expecting to "die in the car", admitting that his original quotes had made it look "like I wanted to die in the car, which is crazy."

In his second season at Haas, Magnussen has amassed 45 of the team's total of 66 championship points putting him eighth in the championship standings. He was fifth in Bahrain and Austria, and sixth in Spain and France.

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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.