‘Late’, ‘slow’ pit-stop hindered Magnussen at Imola

Kevin Magnussen was left pondering what might have been at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix as he lost out in the pit-stop phase.

但丹麦人仍然认为这是一个“不错的周末” as he added three more points to both his own andHaas’ tally, having scored all 15 the team have on the board this season.

The first one of those at Imola came via the sprint, which Magnussen started an excellent fourth but finished eighth due to the unusual choice of medium tyres rather than softs – he admitted that had proven to be the wrong call.

However, with the whole field starting the grand prix on intermediates due to the wet build-up, he made good early progress and was running fifth.

Passed by George Russell and Valtteri Bottas on laps 12 and 14 respectively, just about the whole field stopped for medium tyres between laps 18 and 20 as conditions dried up but Magnussen was among the last to do so – and found himself undercut by Sebastian Vettel, then was also passed by Yuki Tsunoda on lap 48.

That meant the 29-year-old finished ninth and scored two points, well ahead of his team-mateMick Schumacherwhospun twice.

However, it could potentially have been better if Haas had executed the one key strategy call more adeptly.

“We scored points again, on both Saturday and Sunday, so that’s a good weekend – although still when we qualified P4 the hopes were very high at the beginning of the weekend,” Magnussen told Formula1.com.

“But we have to be realistic as well and getting away with points in both the sprint and the main race, that’s a decent weekend.

“At the beginning of the race on intermediates I got up to P5 and the pace was pretty good, and then the track dried up and we were a bit late to come in for slicks so we were undercut by a couple of people.

“I had a slow pit-stop as well and didn’t really nail that part of the race, but still came out and fought for points and scored two – three over the weekend, pretty decent.”

Team principal Guenther Steiner added: “We would have wished to have got a little bit more but after four races, and three with points, we took something home and I think there is more to come.

“Kevin was fighting hard, was going well on the wets and then on the dry tyres we were just not fast enough for the others.

“We scored three points over the weekend, so we need to keep working and get ourselves in position to be at the other end of the midfield, not at the back.”