Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRenault

Magnussen 'couldn't have asked for more' from testing

Kevin Magnussen says he could not have asked for better preparation for his first season with Renault following a productive pre-season of testing.

While Renault suffered from some reliability problems on a number of occasions, the vast majority fell on days when Jolyon Palmer was driving the car. Magnussen, on the other hand, enjoyed four relatively smooth days which saw him complete more than 500 laps and he says the pre-season could not have gone better in terms of track time.

"We have done more than 100 laps on every day and in total more than 500 in the four days," Magnussen said. "So yeah, I couldn’t have asked for more than that. We have been through all of the system checks so everything is now very well known to me and I feel comfortable going into Melbourne and doing a race with this car."

And Magnussen stands by his initial judgement that he expects to be close to the points at the first race of the season in Australia.

"It is never definitely. But put it like this, if we get out of Melbourne with points, any points, then I think we can be happy about that. It is probably just about outside of the top ten where we are, so if we have a good race, we can get points. That is my prediction."

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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.