Magnussen: We deserved points at Sochi

Kevin Magnussen finished the Russian Grand Prix in P12, and thinks that he and his team deserved to score points. 

It’s been a difficult season for the Dane and Haas, with the car rarely good enough for him to be able to get anywhere near the points.

However, that wasn’t the case at Sochi,

After making an excellent start to move up to P9, he ran in and around the points for the entirety of the race and eventually came home two places off a top 10 finish.

While it marked one of the team’s best results of the season, Magnussen feels that they deserved even more.

“We absolutely did the best we could,” he told motorsportweek.com.

“On a day like this, the team just deserves points as we maximised it completely.

“We weren’t quick enough at all to be up there around the top 10. Our pace was to be down the back and we were running in the race for points almost all the race.

Despite the disappointment of narrowly missing out on points, he still thinks that the team should be happy with the race and the progress that it showed.

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“It was a really good job by everyone, even though there’s nothing really to celebrate I think we still need to be satisfied by the job we’ve done and the progress we’re making operationally and also with the set-up of the car,” he added.

“I’m really happy. I got eight cars on the first lap so that was a really good one as well, and a lot of fun, and it was about hanging onto it after that.”

While Magnussen enjoyed a strong race, his team-mate Romain Grosjean struggled and was extremely unhappy with the car.

He made his feelings known on the team radio, and it’s fair to say team principal Guenther Steiner wasn’t too pleased with the Frenchman for doing so.

He told Ekstra Bladet: “What happened to Romain was documented extremely well in the TV broadcast.

“He speaks to people so I do not have to do it or say it in a press release.

“He said very clearly what he thinks about the car.

“Good for him.”

Haas still has two seats open for the 2021 season, and with Callum Ilott driving the car in FP1 at the Eifel Grand Prix, it’s looking less and less likely that both Magnussen and Grosjean will stick around next year.

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