Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHaas F1 Team

Magnussen admits he's prone to 'overdriving'

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New Haas F1 recruit Kevin Magnussen has said that he hopes this year's new-specification cars will help him overcome one of his main perceived areas of weakness as a Formula One driver.

According to the Dane, his driving style means that he has a tendency to overdrive the car. However he hopes that this year's new downforce and tyre regulations may help him overcome this tendency and allow him to really show what he can do.

“I'm a driver that, if I have a problem, it's most of the time because I'm overdriving,” the 24-year-old said this week. “I naturally tend to overdrive the car.

"These new cars will probably suit that better than less downforce, so yeah, I'm looking forward to it," he told a media briefing at his new team's Kannapolis, North Carolina base in the US.

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“It's going to be fun to try. If our expectations are true, then they're going to be the fastest Formula 1 cars [ever] probably, so that would be exciting.”

With the new cars rumoured to be around three to five seconds per lap faster than last year's models, Magnussen is acutely aware that he'll need to be fitter than ever before to withstand the physical stresses.

"I haven't travelled anywhere, vacation or anything else. I've stayed at home to train with my fitness trainer in Denmark," he said. "That's because we don't really know how fast these cars are going to be, how physically demanding they're going to be, so you just have to prepare as hard as you can.”

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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.