The technical issue that saw Kevin Magnussen have an early end to first practice and sit out the whole of the second session has been put down to a rear suspension failure.
After heading back to the pits halfway through the FP1 session this morning, with the left rear tyre flapping around at the back of the RS-16, it was initially thought that the Dane could have experienced the same issue as Felipe Massa, who had two tyre failures in the Williams earlier in the session.
However, both incidents turned out to be nothing to do with tyre related issues. Following investigations by the Renault Sport F1 team, it was found that the suspension had failed on Magnussen’s car, causing the tyre to puncture.
Talking to motorsport.com after the Friday practice sessions, the Dane said that there was no real warning before the incident occurred, “It’s being fixed and then we’re ready tomorrow again. It was a suspension failure – and then the tyre punctured after that. You sit down and then the tyre touches the floor and it rips.”
“I was doing 300km/h – 310km/h and then I felt the car drop. It started to dance around, so… yeah… no real warning in the corners. But it was fairly easy to control. It was straightline, not in a corner, so I just lifted off and stopped the car.”
Having not been able to complete many laps on Friday due to the incident, Magnussen will have plenty of catching up to do tomorrow, and will have to hope that the predicted rainstorms do not materialise.
