Kevin Magnussen praised his Haas team for making their car competitive in midfield every weekend, despite not improving the car significantly all season so far.
Magnussen and teammate Mick Schumacher have placed the team seventh in the Constructors’ Championship at the midpoint of 2022, with the latter securing their first batch of Formula 1 points in the last two races.
Team principal Guenther Steiner has confirmed that Haas will be bringing a significant upgrade package with them to Hungary next weekend in their first major update of the year, and the Dane admitted that he even had a feeling of anxiety about it, in case they didn’t work as expected. and upset the balance he currently has in his VF-22.
Magnussen placed his car in the top 10 in FP2 Friday afternoon, and he remains impressed with how his car has continually evolved from those that have developed around them.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Magnussen told Formula1.com after practice, discussing how Haas has been able to compete at a variety of circuits this season.
Decent day in France today! The pace was good in FP2. Big push tomorrow ? #HaasF1 pic.twitter.com/TQTeAV1ldj
— Kevin Magnussen (@KevinMagnussen) July 22, 2022
“I mean, it’s very, very impressive how the car seems to be, you know, the team is finding rhythm in the car, despite the lack of improvements – so I’m very happy about that.
“And of course it’ll be exciting to see when we get upgrades, but it’s almost like we’re a bit worried about that. So far so good, we’re hoping for more this weekend. -end.
Elsewhere on the track, Schumacher found things a little more difficult as he sought to extract rhythm from his car – sending him spinning on the long Beausset double-straight during FP2, which punctured one of its tire sets.
The German admitted it wasn’t an ideal circumstance for him, but didn’t regret trying to push his car to the edge of grip at the time in the pursuit of pure speed and simple.
“Obviously sometimes you want to try to go to the limit, and that’s what I tried and, you know, obviously carrying a lot of speed into that corner is helpful in terms of lap times and , and in that sense, maybe it was too much,” Schumacher said.
“So yeah, too bad because it meant we were a bit short of tires and for the long haul, but on the other hand, too, you know, we have to try in this case.”
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