Kevin Magnussen says the Haas Formula 1 team’s struggles the past season were similar to 2019 and that caused him to “sound the alarm bells early” over its dire prospects.
Having recovered to the midfield region upon F1’s return to ground effect machinery in 2022, Haas’ competitiveness plunged under the second year of the current regulations.
The American outfit slumped to the bottom of the Constructors’ Championship with only 12 points, after only achieving a solitary point in the last 17 rounds of the season.
Haas had attempted to reverse its dwindling fortunes with the introduction of a sizeable upgrade in Austin, but the team’s troubles continued until the end of the campaign.
However, Magnussen, who recorded a best finish of 10th on three occasions, refused to publicly criticise Haas and admitted his share of responsibility for the side’s downfall.
“I don’t think it helps the team to sell them cheap to you guys,” he commented in Abu Dhabi.
“I think it’s a team sport. We’re all involved. We’re all responsible, and I don’t want to stand here like some holy cow, I’m a part of this problem if you want I guess, as is every team member in Haas.
“And we need to stick together and come back like we have done in the past. This team has shown great potential for a long time, and it’s about time we hit our marks on a consistent basis, because I think the talent and the potential in this team is very big.
“So I want to be there to push it forward and show what we can do.”
When asked if he was able to dissect any positives from the team’s turbulent season, Magnussen answered: “I guess as always there’s many things that you learn when it’s this tough, that you wouldn’t have learned if it was smooth sailing.
“It’s character-building and it’s strengthening. You get resilient, we build up resilience to hard times.
“And it’s not something I enjoy. I haven’t enjoyed this year too much, but there’s always another day to fight. And next year is another big opportunity for us.”
Magnussen and team-mate Nico Hulkenberg sporadically thrived in qualifying, but a persistent problem with tyre degradation prevented either driver from converting more of their multitude of promising grid berths.
The Danish racer asserts that the situation was reminiscent of four years ago, which prompted him to warn the team early about the bleak nature of its unravelling situation.
“Particularly because I was here in 2019 with the team, when we were in a very similar position, I probably sounded the alarm bell a little early,” he explained. “Earlier than many others, because I drove that ’19 car.
“But still even though the symptoms are the same, it’s not a given that the cause is the same because it’s a very different type of car, this ground effect car that produces its downforce in a very different way to what we had in ’19. So we can’t really compare.”
Amid Hulkeneberg’s notion that the upgraded VF-23 didn’t provide a significant lap-time gain, the German elected to convert to the old-spec package for the last two rounds.
Magnussen reveals he would have liked the opportunity to sample the previous concept of car in Abu Dhabi to run a comparison test but that proved to be logistically unviable.
“I think we’ve learned, it was good to get some track information from this type of car,” he addressed.
“Although it wasn’t better, I think it was good that we ran the two cars next to each other for a couple of races.
“I would have liked maybe just one race for that, and then go back to the old one. But that logistically wasn’t possible. So I guess I took one for the team. But happy to do that, and look forward to next year.”
