Renault explains cause of Magnussen fire

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Renault has explained an experimental fuel breather appears to be the cause of Kevin Magnussen's fire during FP1 at the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Magnussen was returning to the pits after his installation laps when he was told to jump out of his car quickly in front of the garage, with flames starting to emerge from the airbox above his head. The car caught fire but Renault mechanics were quickly on the scene to try and bring it under control, with the session red flagged to deal with the issue as fuel escaped from the top of the car.

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Renault technical director Nick Chester says the leak appeared to be caused by a part which is designed with the Mexican Grand Prix in mind.

“Obviously as you spotted we had a fuel leak from a breather," Chester told Sky Sports. "We were running the tanks full and we were running some experimental parts really in preparation for Mexico. So a different set-up to the other car and we’re looking at what happened.

“It does look like the tank was pressurised and we’re just going to investigate further now.”

Despite the fire going on for some time, Chester is hopeful Renault will be able to get Magnussen's car ready to run in the second practice session this afternoon.

“Everyone’s OK, that’s the main thing. Fortunately the car doesn’t seem to be too badly damaged so we’ll try and get it back out for P2. There was quite a bit of dust around but everyone seems to be fine.

“We’re going to try and get him out. Obviously there’s a fair bit of work to do but we’re well on with it, we’re going to try and get him out for as much of the session as we can.

“There’s a little bit of loom damage, there’s obviously a lot to clean up but hopefully we’ll get it out for FP2.”

With a number of Renault mechanics helping try and control the fire while in t-shirt and shorts, Chester said the team had said only team members in fireproof clothing should be close to the car.

“Obviously it should be people with overalls on who go to that first. I think some people could have stepped in early on but we did make the call that it should only be people with overalls on that deal with things.”

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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.