Kevin Magnussen has been given the all-clear after a precautionary visit to the medical centre following a violent accident midway through Sunday's Mexican Grand Prix at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez
The Haas driver had started from 16th on the grid and made up three places in the opening laps. He pitted on lap 23 to change from medium tyres to the hard compound and by lap 31 was busy duelling with Alfa Romeo driver Zhou Guanyu.
He was given little warning before the accident, running through the high-speed turn 8 when he suffered a suspected left-rear suspension failure that threw him off the track and into a brutal head-first impact with the barrier.
The car suffered heavy structural damage in the impact and flames were seen at the back of the VF-23, but Magnussen was able to extricate himself and get to a safe distance before the marshals arrived.
He looked a little dazed after the crash and was taken to the medical centre for evaluation, remaining there under observation until the medical staff were happy with his conditions and allow him to head back to the Haas garage.
“I crashed after having a rear left suspension failure," Magnussen said later who said that he was in decent shape in the circumstances, but a bit battered and bruised.
"It happened in a bad place and I hit the wall, so I got a knock on my hands and they hurt a little bit, but they’re fine.
"We have to investigate a bit more what exactly happened as it just gave up," he commented. "Before that, it was going okay.
Magnussen had been seen having a bit of a moment on the previous lap in his battle with Zhou but it's not clear if this was connected to the issue that ended his race moments later.
"I was stuck in traffic for a long time and cooked my tyres, but I don’t know if whatever caused the failure had an impact for a while beforehand.”
“With Kevin, he had a suspension failure, so we need to dig into why that happened, but it seems to be heat related – we need to check," commented Haas F1 Team principal Guenther Steiner.
"It was a tough day again, but it’s not all negative," Steiner added, with Nico Hulkenberg running much of the day in the top ten before the inevitable tyre degradation issues kicked in and left him in 13th.
"Nico was in a good position to get points, but then with the red flag, which we caused ourselves [with Magnussen[ we couldn’t keep the tyres in the last stint. Our car can’t keep life in the tyres as other cars.
"We could fight for almost the whole distance, but almost isn’t good enough. Otherwise, it seems like the whole team performed well and Nico drove fantastically to try and get something.”
“The tyres just dropped away," confirmed Hulkenberg. "Doing 37 laps was always going to be a long stretch, and on the medium tyre it wasn’t possible for us.
"I was hanging in there and annoying other people, I’m sure they got frustrated seeing my rear wing for so long, so that gave me some pleasure.
"Unfortunately, we’d already used the hard compound as we were on a one-stop strategy and we didn’t know the red flag was coming.
"The timing of the red flag was not ideal, and it hurt my race, but more importantly Kevin is okay.
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