‘He went for a gap that wasn’t there’ – Kevin Magnussen has been criticised by his own boss.
Kevin Magnussen has come under fire from Haas boss Ayao Komatsu following a crash that wiped out both of the team’s cars on the first lap of the recent Monaco Grand Prix.
Magnussen has defended himself to the hilt since colliding with Red Bull’s Sergio Perez on the run up the hill out of Sainte Devote, an incident which resulted in the Dane’s team-mate, Nico Hulkenberg, being caught in the aftermath after both had started on the back row of the grid after being disqualified from qualifying for a technical infringement.
Magnussen has insisted there was a gap and that Perez should have left him room, firmly believing the Mexican had seen him in his mirrors, and that he was being pushed to the wall and intimidated.
Komatsu, however, clearly did not see it that way and has made his view clear to Magnussen, who is now under instruction to be on his best behaviour over this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix.
“In Monaco, he had the speed from FP1, and then in qualifying he couldn’t quite deliver,” assessed Komatsu. “Of course, we had a team issue such that we had to start from the back.
“From that moment, we had to go for an alternative strategy, splitting the drivers. You have got to play the long game.
“So the decision-making process, at that instant, to go for that gap, which wasn’t really there, it’s not necessarily right.
“He expected Perez to leave more room for him, but that’s not up to him. In the end, there was a point where everything was under his control, where he could have made a decision to back off, which he didn’t.
“So we spoke about all this completely openly, to then just reset for this weekend again.”
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