Kevin Magnussen was pleased with his day at the Hockenheimring, with the Dane finishing inside the top eight in both Free Practice sessions on Friday.
The Haas F1 Team racer was eighth in the morning session, 1.328 seconds off the pace of Daniel Ricciardo, before moving up to seventh in the afternoon, 1.104 seconds behind afternoon leader Max Verstappen.
Haas again showed themselves to be the best of the rest behind the leading three teams, with Magnussen finishing just behind team-mate Romain Grosjean in both sessions, and although there is work to be done to find a better set-up for race conditions, he feels positive about the pace on short runs, which he hopes bodes well for Saturday’s Qualifying session.
“It’s a good track. I’m enjoying driving here and it went well today,” said Magnussen. “We’ve been happy with our day. We need to look into finding a bit more pace on the long run, on high fuel, but low fuel looks to be very competitive.
“It’s a pretty low-grip track, so the car does a lot of things, like you do have a bit of understeer, and you do have a bit of oversteer. The car is moving around. That’s just how it is here, but our car seems to be working alright.”
Magnussen admits there was a lot of degradation on the tyres due to the high temperatures seen at the Hockenheimring, but with cooler conditions expected during the weekend, he feels this may not be so much of an issue come race day.
“Tyre wear, in terms of actual wear, isn’t so bad, but degradation is high because the temperatures get very hot – you overheat the tyres,” said Magnussen. “We’ll work on that and, hopefully, make some steps, also I think the weather’s going to be a bit colder the next few days, so it might not be such a big problem.
“So far though, it all looks good.”
