Kevin Magnussen has concerns around proposed pit lane speed limit for yellow flag areas
Kevin Magnussen points something out to his Haas team-mate Nico Hulkenberg. Bahrain February 2023
If Formula 1 wants to drop the speed limit under yellow flags to 80kph then Kevin Magnussen suggests they should rather have the drivers engage their pit limiter than run to a delta time.
Formula 1 returned to the race track at the Bahrain International Circuit on Thursday for Day One of pre-season testing.
But while the teams were free to plot their own programmes, the final 15 minutes of both of the morning and afternoon sessions were dedicated to the FIA running yellow flag and Virtual Safety Car tests as they tested their own systems.
That test included the drivers dropping to a delta time of 80kph when the yellow flags were shown.
Magnussen, though, has proposed what he feels could be a better solution to a delta time, engaging the pit limiter.
“I know it’s at the 80k the limit, so you can just use the pit limiter,” he told the media including PlanetF1.com.
“Maybe we should just do that instead of like a delta, just be on the limiter like they do at Le Mans in the slow zones, this is basically that.
“But with the delta you can go up and down. I don’t know, it’s okay, I don’t mind either way.”
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Asked if it could cause a problem having to slow down so drastically, he replied: “Well, if you just had green flag and then went straight into one of these zones, from 320 down to 80, that could get strange.”
Although Magnussen was slowest of all on Day One, the Dane undone by a few Ferrari gremlins, he still managed to cover 55 laps and reckons his VF-23 is a step up from last year’s car.
“Certainly I’ve noticed places that car feels better than last year’s car,” he said. “That’s obviously expected as we try and improve the car all the time.”
Haas, though, weren’t without some minor porpoising.
“There’s hints of it,” Magnussen revealed, “but it’s better than last year with these new rules.”
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
