Haas boss Guenther Steiner says Kevin Magnussen offered an apology to the team in the wake of his frustrated radio message during Formula 1’s Canadian Grand Prix.
Magnussen started from the pit lane after suffering a heavy crash in qualifying (pictured), and remained towards the back of the field throughout the 70-lap race.
During the closing stages Magnussen radioed Haas to comment "this is the worst experience I’ve ever had, in any race car, ever."
The Dane was reminded by his race engineer that Haas’ mechanics had spent substantial time re-building the car, before boss Steiner joined the airwaves, telling his driver "it’s also not nice for us, enough means enough."
Steiner confirmed post-race that Magnussen offered a sincere apology and that the matter is considered closed.
"He apologised to everyone on the radio after the race," said Steiner. "It was good he came over. Everybody is frustrated, the guys worked until three in the morning and you’re last and second last.
"It’s not something that motivates you and you don’t need any more discussions how bad it is.
"Everyone is fully conscious and what I wanted to avoid is the guy gets beaten down more than he needs to be.
"After the race, I don’t know if he explained it, he didn’t mean to be critical, he just tried to explain a situation that this was a bad situation, but not blaming anybody.
"When you’re on the other side of the radio, you don’t know that. Maybe I could understand it, but the guys do not know, because they don’t know the full story. He apologised to everybody, which is something a grown up does. We move on, there’s no point to dwell on it."
Steiner described Haas’ weekend as “disastrous” as the team slipped to eighth in the Constructors’ Championship.
"I think we know from qualifying that we can’t catch a break,” said Steiner. "[Romain Grosjean] wasn’t taken out, but the wing was coming off and who does the wing hit? It was us.
"We are 19th and 20th at the start, and that’s not good. And our race pace wasn’t there as well.
"We could not say if that didn’t happen, we wouldn’t have been good. It’s one of these disastrous weekends which started in Q2 and didn’t finish since then. Only thing you can do is regroup and try to do better next time."
