Haas F1 Team suffered a double retirement late on in the race at the Turkish Grand Prix.
Romain Grosjean’s race came to a premature end due to damage to his car. Nicholas Latifi crashed into Grosjean on lap 39 and the Williams Racing driver was forced to retire. Grosjean carried on but it became evident that the car had suffered too much floor damage and he had to retire on lap 49.
“It was a tricky race as suspected – it was very slippery. We struggled all weekend to generate tire temperature. I didn’t feel very comfortable in the car, or at least I couldn’t really push the way I wanted. There were times in the race it was getting better, other times it wasn’t,” said Grosjean.
“Then Nicholas (Latifi) crashed into me which heavily damaged my floor. We retired the car shortly after that. We were struggling in these conditions from the beginning, it was always going to be a hard race. If there were mixed conditions maybe we could have done something, but in a pure wet race it was harder.”
Kevin Magnussen technically finished the race in seventeenth place. However, Magnussen had to retire on lap 55 after an issue during his last pit stop. One of the tyre’s did not go on properly and Magnussen’s car had to be pushed back to pit. The car was retired but Magnussen was classified seventeenth as a sufficient amount of race was completed.
Magnussen said: “The race had been going really well. The tires really wore down to the carcass, and when they got to that stage we were really strong. I think we cost ourselves some points today. I guess a tire didn’t come on I guess at the pit stop. I had to stop the car and get pulled back. I lost two laps and that was it really. We had really good speed in the car, so once again it’s very sad that we’ve missed a points opportunity.”
Team Principal Guenther Steiner rues the points the team missed out on. Magnussen was on course for a top ten finish when he pitted but alas, it just wasn’t meant to be for the team.
Steiner said: “The race was going in the right direction, at least for Kevin (Magnussen). We were solid there in the top 10, looking quite stable, and then we had a bad pit stop again. That took us out of the points. From there on we just couldn’t do a lot. It was a very interesting and exciting race, but we weren’t part of it to get points. There’s nobody else to blame but ourselves. We need to fix this going forward.”
