Kevin Magnussen qualified a hopeful eighth position in Barcelona but had an incident with Lewis Hamilton on the first lap. The Dane lost a lot of time having to pit, and after going for a one-stop strategy (he was the only driver to use the hard tyre) struggled to make any comeback to 17th place finish.
Mick Schumacher, meanwhile, reached Q3 for the first time in his Formula 1 career, starting 10th. At one point he seemed to have a chance to score his first points, but with a two-stop strategy, he lost ground to the three-stoppers and finished 14th.
Barcelona’s disappointment came after a disastrous day for Haas in Miami, where both drivers were involved in crashes in the closing laps. After Magnussen’s promising fifth place at the start of the season in Bahrain, the team has managed just two ninth places in the last five rounds.
“It affects you a little bit because these are missed opportunities,” team boss Guenther Steiner told Motorsport.com. “The car seems to have a good pace, because we qualified eighth and tenth, so we need to get points at some point.”
“The missed opportunities are the result of a little bit of bad luck at times with the safety car, and obviously it turns into frustration. It’s not all bad for us, it’s like we need a sun rise Sunday. “, he explained.
Steiner admitted that the team made Magnussen’s race difficult by lengthening his stint with the tyres: “If you have an incident on the first lap, it is what it is. So it’s a big frustration that we ended up where we were after Turn 4.” .
“I think Lewis understeered a bit and went for him, that was it. The strategy we tried didn’t work but we had nothing to lose but it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway,” the Italian continued.
“He came out much later than Lewis, because he had to go slower, and then he did a one-stop strategy.
“It was two stops, but the first one was after one lap. We tried to mount the C1 (hard tire) to see what would happen, and it didn’t work. Lewis made up time, and we didn’t,” Steiner said.
Steiner acknowledged that they realized they had made a mistake with Schumacher’s strategy , and that he could have made a third stop, like most of his rivals: “It was too late. I think even with a third stop it would have been difficult to get into the points, but surely I would have had more options”.
Last year in Monaco, the German showed a fighting side in an uncompetitive car, setting the 14th fastest time in FP3 before an accident knocked him out of qualifying.
The head of his team is hopeful that the German will be able to find good speed once again on the streets of the Principality: “I hope we do well again, like we did here in qualifying. In Monaco you always He does 95% of the race on Saturday, so you have to focus on that.”
“It won’t be easy, it’s a new experience with these cars. And as always you just try to do your best,” Steiner said.
