Guenther Steiner has downplayed the significance of the black flags handed out to both Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean during the opening free practice session of the Monaco Grand Prix weekend on Thursday.
The Team Principal of the Haas F1 Team says it was a request from within the team to the stewards in Monaco to black flag the drivers as they had lost telemetry and radio communications with both drivers, with the stewards showing them the black flag so they immediately returned to the pits.
“It’s been an interesting and eventful day for us,” said Steiner. “This morning we had some issues with our IT equipment and we couldn’t run for a while.
“It was all sorted, but a lot of people read a lot more into the black flags than there actually was. We still managed to get out with about 20 minutes left in FP1.”
Both Magnussen and Grosjean were able to resume their practice session with around twenty minutes remaining and then take full part in the second session, and Steiner was happy with the performance levels that both drivers showed across both ninety-minute sessions.
Magnussen finished eighth fastest in the morning session and Grosjean tenth, while the afternoon session saw the Dane again ahead of the Frenchman, this time in seventh and eleventh respectively, with Steiner hoping for a similar performance during Saturday’s Qualifying session in the principality.
“FP2 was pretty good,” said Steiner. “We ran a lot of laps, we didn’t have any issues. Everything was up and running again. The car seems to be competitive.
“So, let’s see what happens Saturday, and hopefully we can repeat our result from today and have a good qualifying – which means having a good race on Sunday.”