A disappointing Saturday was followed by a nightmare Sunday for the Haas F1 Team at Silverstone, with Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen colliding on the opening lap for a second consecutive season, with the damage to both cars enough to see them both retire not long after.
Frenchman Grosjean had started fourteenth with his Danish team-mate Magnussen sixteenth for the British Grand Prix but exiting the loop heading onto the Wellington Straight, the two banged wheels, causing damage to both cars and leaving them running slowly back to the pits for repairs.
Grosjean lasted the longest but was lapped just prior to retiring in the pits after just nine laps, with the Frenchman disheartened that the team was unable to make the most of using mixed set-ups on the two cars in a bid to work out the shortfalls the VF-19 possesses in 2019, particularly when using its tyres.
“I picked up the rear right puncture,” said Grosjean. “After the pit-stop the damage to the car, on the floor, the brake ducts and so on, it was too much to be able to carry on racing.
We had to retire the car unfortunately. It’s a real shame. We wanted to evaluate both packages on the cars. My car felt really good on the way to the grid, I was encouraged by those laps, and was hoping for a good race.”
Team-mate Magnussen came off worse in the collision and ended his day after just six laps, but at least the Dane felt they did learn a few things about the car throughout the weekend that he feels could benefit them going forward.
“I think we had a decent weekend going for us, but obviously qualifying went worse than we expected,” admitted Magnussen. “I think we’ve learned some things this weekend about the car, with the experiments we’ve tried.
“We didn’t get any result out of this but hopefully we can take some learnings onto the next one.”
