Magnussen: Haas potential shows ‘positives and negatives’

Kevin Magnussen believes Haas’ potential has highlighted both “positive and negative” aspects of its 2018 Formula 1 campaign.

The American squad has amassed 90 points so far this season and looks set to for a fifth-place finish in the constructors’ championship. It has already enjoyed its strongest season in F1 to date, though opportunities to score big points have also gone begging.

Its most notable setback came at the season-opener in Australia, where a disastrous pair of botched pit stops robbed the team of a potential 22 points.

Magnussen has recorded 55 of Haas’ overall points tally this season and feels the team can learn from its mistakes this year in preparation for 2019.

“I think 55 points is good for a midfield team, but I still think there was potential for more this year,” Magnussen said.

“That’s both a positive and a negative. Positive, because we’ve showed we have great potential in the team to do more, but of course, it’s always disappointing not to get everything out of it as you could.

“We’re learning as a team and next year we’ll have even more experience. We’ll have learned a lot from this year and, hopefully, we can do a bit more next year.

“As a team, we’re doing better and better. We’re learning as we go. For us, we’re such a new team, performing at such a high level already, sometimes we’re a bit short of experience for the performance levels being achieved.

“We’re fighting big, experienced teams like Renault, McLaren, Williams and, as a new team, sometimes it’s hard to avoid mistakes because of a lack of experience.

“I’d rather be in an inexperienced team overperforming than in an experienced team underperforming.”

Magnussen, who has scored points at half of the 20 races so far and currently occupies ninth place in the drivers’ standings, said it is difficult to pinpoint Haas’ most difficult moment of the year.

“It’s hard to point your finger at one thing,” he explained.

“I don’t feel like it’s one issue that’s been reoccurring. I think we’ve just faced a lot of different challenges. That’s been a theme for the year.

“A lot of things that could go wrong, did go wrong. We haven’t had the margins on our side this year. A lot of things just tipped over to the wrong side to our disadvantage. Sometimes you have seasons like that.

“Generally, though, we’ve been strong all year. We’ve just had some missed opportunities.”