Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRenault

Magnussen: Renault should have scored by now

40

Kevin Magnussen believes Renault should have scored its first points by now having been hit by problems in each of its first two races.

Jolyon Palmer finished 11th in the opening race in Australia while Magnussen picked up a puncture at the start, before the Dane was forced to start from the pit lane in Bahrain after missing a call to be weighed by the FIA during Friday practice. With Palmer also retiring in Bahrain, Magnussen - who recovered to 11th - believes Renault should already have some points on the board.

"It’s difficult to say whether we are overachieving or not," Magnussen said. "I don’t know what the real expectations were. We knew it was going to be difficult, but I think I was expecting to score points straight away, maybe not big points, but I do think we should have scored points, at least in Australia. If we hadn’t had the puncture on the first lap I think we should have scored points."

And Magnussen says he will wait for updates to the car before revising his expectations for the rest of the season.

"It’s difficult to say whether we are overachieving or not, but I think we knew, as I said, that it would be difficult to begin with and then we’ll see what progress we can make.

"I know we have stuff coming later on in the season. How much that’s going to bring is going to be interesting to see. As I say, we don’t know at the moment. We’ll just work with what we have, improve that as much as we can and wait for the upgrades and see what they bring."

Romain Grosjean column: A start beyond my craziest dream

Chris Medland's 2016 Chinese Grand Prix preview

PROFILE: Paddy Lowe, the pioneer

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.