11/05/2019
NEWS STORY
Rich Energy Haas F1 Team drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen delivered strong qualifying efforts of seventh and eighth, respectively, for Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix at Circuit de Barcelona - Catalunya. It was the fourth time in five races this season the American squad placed both its drivers in Q3.
Magnussen set the seventh-fastest time in Q1 with a lap of 1:17.669 around the 4.655-kilometer (2.892-mile), 16-turn track while Grosjean was 12th-quickest with a lap of 1:18.042. Only the top-15 drivers move on to Q2.
In Q2, Grosjean set the seventh-fastest time with a lap of 1:17.066 and Magnussen was ninth with a lap of 1:17.272 to return both to the top-10 advancing to Q3.
Grosjean qualified a best-of-the-rest seventh in Q3, behind the Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull line-ups, with a lap of 1:16.911, while Magnussen claimed eighth with a lap of 1:16.922.
Both Magnussen and Grosjean ran exclusively on the Pirelli P Zero Red soft tire throughout qualifying.
Romain Grosjean: "I hope we can carry this form over in the race. Here we've got the tires to work nicely, an area we've been struggling with recently, but we're happy with today. We're not far off the Red Bull's and we're a good chunk ahead of the cars behind us. I think we can be proud of that. Everyone knows this track very well, so it's not easy to make a difference. We extracted the best from today. It's been a good day - a good qualifying."
Kevin Magnussen: "We probably did the maximum we could do today. We were just two tenths of a second from one of the Red Bull's and ahead of the rest of the midfield, so I'm quite happy. We're not quite sure about race pace for tomorrow, we know it's a difficult track to overtake on. Today we were sixth tenths of a second faster than the next best in the midfield behind us, so hopefully we'll have enough to keep those guys behind. I don't think it'll be an easy race, but I think we're in a good position to score good points starting both cars in P7 and P8."
Guenther Steiner: "It was a good result today. The whole team came back after a hard week in Baku to qualify today in seventh and eighth. Everybody did a good job, it's fantastic. It's definitely nice to be in this position again. We're looking forward to tomorrow and hopefully scoring points."