Magnussen suspects loss of pace is due to floor change since Albon crash

2020 70th Anniversary Grand Prix

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Kevin Magnussen suspects his poor pace compared to his team mate in yesterday’s qualifying session is a legacy of his first-lap collision with Alexander Albon last weekend.

Magnussen said his car was slower than Romain Grosjean’s on the straights on Friday and ended Q1 seven tenths of a second slower than his team mate.

“After the crash last Sunday we had to go back to an old floor,” said Magnussen. “When you have a weekend like this which is just massively off you can’t help question whether or not that has something to do with it.”

“It’s not that I left a lot of lap time on the table,” he said. “I felt like my laps in qualifying were the best I could do and yet I was still seven tenths off my team mate.”

Haas fitted an old floor of the same specification as the previous one to Magnussen’s car following his collision with Albon. “It’s the same floor, just an old one, and suddenly we’re finding all these problems with the balance and really big lack of grip in the car,” he said.

Magnussen set a 1’28.2 in qualifying yesterday compared to a 1’27.1 a week ago. The floor is “the most obvious thing” that could be wrong, he said, “because the car was working really well last weekend and then suddenly isn’t working this weekend. Same track, same driver just a second slower.”

Kevin Magnussen, Haas, Silverstone, 2020
Magnussen’s floor was damaged last weekend
“Usually it doesn’t matter whether you swap around on the parts if they’re the same spec,” he added. “This time we’ve seen a very big drop in performance in the car and we can’t really say why that is. It’s an interesting one and obviously frustrating when the car was working very well last week.”

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner admitted he was “baffled” by the problems Magnussen had encountered.

“Kevin the whole weekend just didn’t get a good feeling, there’s not enough grip. While Romain was as happy as we can be at the moment. I cannot give you an answer why. We are looking into it but we are a bit baffled as well why it changed around so dramatically.”

“We put another floor on as well, again, we changed the floor on Friday and it didn’t make a difference,” he added. “We thought it would be that but apparently it wasn’t. So we have to go back and do some homework and hopefully we find why the car is so inconsistent and why they’re so different between them.”

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3 comments on “Magnussen suspects loss of pace is due to floor change since Albon crash”

  1. Grip can also be caused by a problem with suspension… or installation points if suspension…

    It definitely took quite a hit last week.

  2. I do guess that quality control is a bit more tricky to ensure, and check, when it’s outsourced like at Haas, which might account for a different effect in a sport where tiny changes matter a lot. But could also just be bad luck for all I know! Hope they find the problem before next race, it’s not as if they have a lot to spare and Magnussen was still able to show quite a bit in the races despite that.

  3. Interestingly, both Magnussen and Kvyat were weak compared to last week, which may suggest their repaired cars are not as good as the original cars. Having said that, Grosjean was one of the very few drivers to go faster than last week, so probably he under-performed back then.

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