Haas F1 Team drivers Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean earned strong starting positions for Sunday’s Russian Grand Prix by advancing to Q3 in the qualifying at Sochi Autodrom. The duo qualified fifth and ninth, respectively, as the American squad placed both its drivers into Q3 for the ninth time this season.
Kevin Magnussen
“I’m happy. It’s best of the rest, again – pole position for us. It’s a good feeling. It was a good lap. It could’ve been better. The only place I messed up was in turn two. I hit the curb and definitely when you do that, you lose time with wheelspin. I thought from there it would probably be difficult, but I kept it together and did a good rest of the lap.”
“Luckily, it’s not like the Red Bulls qualified into Q3 and then just didn’t run. We have more people running the hypersoft tire – that’s a bit better for us. It would’ve been worse if the Force Indias or both Saubers had started just outside the top-10 with fresh tires. That would’ve been tricky. I’m sure the Red Bulls will come back strong. It’ll be interesting to see how far they get. There’s a good chance they’ll get back up, but the best of the rest is our target.”
Romain Grosjean
“Unfortunately, we had too much traffic on the out lap of my last run in Q3. The tires were really cold to start the lap and I just didn’t get the grip. I couldn’t repeat my lap time from Q2, which is a bit of a shame, but it happens. Some cars were really slowing down a lot in the last two corners and that created a bit of a queue. For the race, well, we’re starting on hypersofts with Renault behind starting on ultrasofts. They didn’t run in Q2, but with the other penalties, they’re going to start 11th and 12th. I don’t know what it’s going to be like. We’ll do our best, but P9 is definitely not where I wanted to be.”
After all that…here’s where we finish!
P5 – @KevinMagnussen ???
P9 – @RGrosjean ???53-lap race around @SochiAutodrom on Sunday. ?? pic.twitter.com/Ekov1XinVo
— Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team) September 29, 2018
