The MoneyGram Haas F1 Team’s Kevin Magnussen has revealed that a left rear suspension failure caused his heavy crash on lap 33 of Sunday’s Mexico City Grand Prix.
The Dane pitted on lap 23 but his race ended ten laps later when he made sizeable contact with the tire barrier however, he was evaluated by the Formula One medical team and released from the infield medical center shortly afterward.
Speaking following the race, Magnussen said:
“I crashed after having a rear left suspension failure. It happened in a bad place and I hit the wall, so I got a knock on
my hands and they hurt a little bit, but they’re fine. We have to investigate a bit more what exactly happened as it just
gave up. Before that, it was going okay, I was stuck in traffic for a long time and cooked my tires, but I don’t know if
whatever caused the failure had an impact for a while beforehand.
Nico Hulkenberg, who celebrated his 200th Grand Prix start on Sunday started the race from 12th and came home in 13th. Speaking following the action the German commented saying:
“The tires just dropped away, doing 37 laps was always going to be a long stretch, and on the medium tire it wasn’t
possible for us. Unfortunately, we’d already used the hard compound as we were on a one-stop strategy and we didn’t
know the red flag was coming. The timing of the red flag was not ideal, and it hurt my race – but more importantly,
Kevin is okay. I was hanging in there and annoying other people, I’m sure they got frustrated seeing my rear wing for
so long, so that gave me some pleasure.”
Haas F1 Team Principal Guenther Steiner says that the team will have to investigate what caused Magnussen’s suspension failure.
With Kevin, he had a suspension failure, so we need to dig into why that happened, but it seems to be heat related –
we need to check. It was a tough day again, but it’s not all negative. Nico was in a good position to get points, but then
with the red flag, which we caused ourselves, we couldn’t keep the tires in the last stint. Our car can’t keep life in the
tires as other cars. We could fight for almost the whole distance, but almost isn’t good enough. Otherwise, it seems
like the whole team performed well and Nico drove fantastically to try and get something.