Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRenault

'Annoying' pit lane penalty frustrates Magnussen

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Kevin Magnussen has described his pit lane start penalty as "annoying" after missing a call to be weighed during Friday practice.

The Renault driver was called to the weighbridge by the FIA as he followed Daniil Kvyat in to the pit lane during FP2, with the Red Bull stopping as requested. Magnussen said he didn't realise that both drivers were required to stop and felt it was a strange situation which led to his error.

"Obviously annoying to have that," Magnussen said. "But I guess it’s one of those things, you just learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

"It was a tough circumstance because normally they don’t stop two cars right behind each others, and in this case I didn’t actually miss the red light - I thought it was for someone else. Which it was, but it was also for me. It was for both of us. I was correct in saying it was for Kvyat but I didn’t know it was for me as well. It’s difficult to know, but here we are."

And Magnussen explained the FIA does not have to inform Renault of the mistake, which is why his car was not returned to be weighed immediately.

"That wasn’t communicated from the FIA to the guys that I needed to be on the weighbridge, so that’s something that’s unlucky as well. They don’t have to do that, you have to stop at the weighbridge. There’s nothing wrong in them not telling the team, it’s my responsibility, but I would say extremely unlucky - here we are."

With the penalty for the indiscretion leading to a pit lane start, Magnussen feels it is additionally harsh because there would be no punishment for the car being underweight during practice.

"The way I look at it, what is frustrating about it, even if I had stopped at the weighbridge and got caught - let’s say hypothetically I was illegal on something, underweight, rear wing too low or whatever - there’s no penalty for that in practice.

"So why do we penalise me for so hard because I didn’t stop? There’s no consequence for stopping, there’s no reason for me not to stop. It’s not a way of cheating, it’s no advantage. But there we are, that’s the rule and it’s the same for everyone - it was my turn this time."

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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.