15/08/2020
NEWS STORY
Haas F1 Team drivers Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean qualified 16th and 17th, respectively, for Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix, the sixth round of the 2020 FIA Formula One World Championship at Circuit de Barcelona - Catalunya.
Grosjean and Magnussen sported two new sets of the Pirelli P Zero Red soft tires for their Q1 qualifying runs. Magnussen's best lap of 1:17.908, set on his second timed outing, placed him 16th overall - missing the cut to Q2 by one spot. Grosjean similarly improved on his second run on fresh tires, lapping in 1:18.089 - placing 17th overall directly behind his teammate.
Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes claimed top spot on the grid for the Spanish Grand Prix, the third pole of the season for the British driver and his 92nd career Formula One pole. His Q3 fast lap of 1:15.584 beat teammate and second-place qualifier Valtteri Bottas by a scant .059 of a second.
Romain Grosjean: "The car just didn't feel the same from this morning, I could feel it coming sadly. It's a shame as I had really wanted to keep the car exactly the same from Friday. We had to change a lot of parts on the car like the engine and so on. The guys had worked until 4 a.m. and I really wanted to give them something good today, but the good front-end that I had has gone. I can't drive with understeer and I didn't have any confidence - it's killing us. We need to analyze and understand what happened."
Kevin Magnussen: "It was close in terms of getting through, it wouldn't have taken a lot to get further up and into Q2. We were compromised quite a bit on the out lap of my second run with all the traffic. It was a pretty hectic and slow out lap from a lot of people. The last few corners I was basically stopped on-track, I was just rolling the wheels slightly, it was walking speed. The tires cooled down a lot. The car's been there all weekend though, it was back to normal. I just haven't been able to put together a lap to show it. It's a little bit of a missed opportunity I feel. I was confident coming into qualifying that I'd have a good car, and I felt like I did. Our race pace looks pretty good though, much better than our qualifying pace - which we didn't really get to show this afternoon."
Guenther Steiner: "It was a very disappointing qualifying today, we expected more out of it following yesterday's pace. We lost all our pace - we need to look into that and see where we lost it and why we lost it. The only positive now is that our race pace simulation was good on Friday. Hopefully we can save that one over into Sunday and have a good race. It would have been nice to start a little further ahead, but nevertheless, if the predicted race pace is there, we can hopefully make moves. Everybody's pushing hard so we get some points, hopefully we get a good start and keep out of trouble. We'll just keep on working hard."