Haas’s Kevin Magnussen qualified 18th for Sundays race, missing out on advancing to Q2 by 2 tenths, after coming across the McLaren of Oscar Piastri at turn 2, Tamburello, on his final Q1 attempt.
Having originally finishing qualifying in P2, Piastri was summoned to the stewards following the session and awarded a 3 place grid drop.
The Australian will now start the Grand Prix from the third row in P5.
When asked about the what happened in the incident, Magnussen was quick to respond frustratedly, “Well, Turn 1, Piastri, did you see the qualifying?”.
The Dane put the incident down as bad luck having struggled with traffic in previous races which he believes is hampering his progress this season.
“I don’t know, you know, it’s the fourth or fifth time this year that we have traffic qualifying on the lap that counts. And I don’t think we’re doing anything different to everyone else in terms of timing, so, you know, leaving the pit, I think it’s bad luck.
“But by now it sounds like a bad excuse, so just got to be patient and hope for it to stop soon, because it’s really having a big effect on my season.”
A frustrating day for Magnussen as the Haas car clearly had pace, his teammate Nico Hulkenberg making Q3, which he finished in tenth.
Magnussen himself was quicker than Hulkenberg in the first two runs in Q1 which made it even more agonising for him to see his teammate advance from the session with relative ease as the German ended up in P3.
“I guess the frustration is doubled when you see the performance of the car as well. I was really happy with the car, you know.
“So I was in front of Nico in both the first and the second lap. And, you know, with the track evolution, I think that went our way with the limitations we have.”
He went on further to explain he wasn’t very happy with his VF-24 after FP2, however thanks to some changes made in FP3 he was really happy with his machine going into qualifying.
“Yesterday, in FP2, I didn’t like it [the car] so much.
“I made some fairly big changes for today in FP3 and I really liked the car.”
He faces an uphill struggle to score points on Sunday with another lowly grid position.
