Kevin Magnussen ended his pre-season testing programme with the fifth fastest time around the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Thursday, and is now ready to get racing.
The Haas F1 Team driver completed 119 laps with a best time of 1:20.504, the fastest the VF-17 has gone so far in testing, and the Dane believes that in the relative short testing schedule they have learned a lot about their new car.
“Another good day. I’m really happy with testing in general,” said Magnussen. “I think we’ve learned a huge amount about the car.
“We know where we need to work between here and Australia. I’m looking forward to getting back in the car for the race in a couple of weeks.”
Team Principal Guenther Steiner was also happy with the outcome of Thursday’s running, feeling they got a lot of information and data out of the day, despite not quite making it to a full race distance in their long run.
“A pretty good day. We got almost a race distance in,” said Steiner. “We ran just a few laps short, something like 20 laps short of a full distance this afternoon.
“We got a lot of information. We ran to a quite tough program, but it was good. We are very happy with the day today and how it went, and how to get the best out of the data.
“There’s just one more day to go and then we’ll get ready for Australia.”
