Magnussen unhappy with Safety Car calls

2016 Brazilian Grand Prix

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Kevin Magnussen believes the decisions about when to use the Safety Car during the Brazilian Grand Prix were too conservative.

The Renault driver ended the race in 14th position but said “I do wish we could have driven more today.”

Brazilian Grand Prix in pictures
“Of course you should have red flags to clear a crash and safety should always be the priority, but after that, I feel we were too careful with driving in the wet.”

The race was red-flagged on two occasions. The first came after Kimi Raikkonen crashed on the pit straight and the second followed an aborted attempt to resume the race after the initial stoppage.

Magnussen believes it should be down to the drivers to cope with the conditions, however challenging they are.

“At the end of the day it’s up to us drivers to slow down enough to get around it,” he said. “We just need to drive to the conditions and not go over the limit, which is exactly what we do in the dry.”

“The conditions today were definitely testing, especially turn 12 which isn’t actually a corner in the dry but became a real corner in the wet,” he added. “There was clear aquaplaning there, and even if there hadn’t been, it was still on the limit.”

Magnussen’s team mate Jolyon Palmer retired from the race after crashing into Daniil Kvyat. “The visibility was so bad that I couldn’t even see past my steering wheel,” he said.

“I didn’t see where the corner went, I knew that there was the pit wall and pit lane somewhere. I just couldn’t see anything. Kvyat in front of me was slower and I hit him.”

2016 Brazilian Grand Prix

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    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    4 comments on “Magnussen unhappy with Safety Car calls”

    1. I think the only bad call was the second red flag, considering the rain was easing off and the conditions weren’t any better when they eventually restarted.

      1. Agreed. Other than that second red flag it was fine.

    2. I wouldn’t blame race control and Charlie for erring on the side of caution. It was really a case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”.

      It also seemed that many drivers were – quite expectedly – calling on Charlie with their opinion, where that opinion was to their benefit – be it calling off the race, or letting it run. In such circumstances, I hope Charlie listens to only Bernd Mayländer’s assessment of the track and conditions.

    3. Just get Pirelli to make better tyres and it’s problem solved… Ridiculous that the world’s best racing series has to run around on terrible wet tyres.

      Pirelli not having time to develop them is ridiculous, this is their 6th year in F1! They just do a poor job in general. The tyre contract should come up for tender again.

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