Haas F1 driver Kevin Magnussen admitted he needs to be more “on the ball” with his choices for car set-up going forward in the 2024 Formula 1 season, as he conceded he often trades too much qualifying pace in order to have a strong race car, leaving him trailing behind team-mate Nico Hulkenberg and on the brink of elimination in the first knockout session.
The Dane famously got a pole position for Haas in mixed conditions at the 2022 São Paulo GP, but since then his qualifying form dipped, as he struggled to get to grips with the VF-23 as well as his team-mate Hulkenberg did. Whilst the German was often getting his car near the top 10 or even in it, Magnussen would struggle to get out of Q1. The final head-to-head between the pair in 2023 was a staggering 15-7 in favour of the German.
And that trend seems to be continuing so far in 2024, with Hulkenberg getting to Q3 in Bahrain, whilst Magnussen could only manage 15th, over six tenths slower. In Saudi Arabia, the Dane outqualified the German, but the picture wasn’t very clear pace-wise due to Hulkenberg suffering from a fuel system issue in his Haas as Q2 started.
Speaking on media day in Saudi Arabia, Magnussen openly admitted he needs to “make progress” in his qualifying performances — but was adamant that it’s a fine line between that and losing some critical race performance due to set-up compromises — and believes he’ll need to figure out a way to improve his one-lap pace without sacrificing his long-run performance.
“Well, I think it’s an area that I need to make progress. Getting that one lap out of the car,” he admitted. “On the other hand, it’s going really well in race conditions.“So I don’t want to give anything away from that. I think my driving style, the way I set the car up, is probably just more based for racing.
“But I don’t want to be that close to being out of Q1, when I know the car has more in it in qualifying. I want to maximise that too. But at the end of the day, it is a compromise.
“And Sunday is when you score points – or in the races – is when you score points. So that’s always going to be my focus.”
And whilst he could pinpoint his Bahrain struggles to an overly “greedy” balance on the front-end, he reiterated the need to be “more on the ball” when it comes to getting the set-up trade-off just right in order to maximise both qualifying and race results.
“I think in Bahrain, I just overbalanced the car massively on the front wing. And that’s an easy fix. You just wind it down again.
“But nonetheless, I went wrong in Quali. Got too greedy with the balance. So I need to be more on the ball there, not to be in the wrong place with the car.”
