Magnussen: Clash with Grosjean looked worse than it was

Kevin Magnussen says he’s cleared the air with both Haas boss Guenther Steiner and teammate Romain Grosjean following the two drivers’ clash during the Spanish Grand Prix and doesn’t expect repercussions from the incident.

Both Magnussen and Grosjean were summoned separately to speak to team principal Steiner immediately after the Spanish GP following the pair clashing during the safety car restart. While Magnussen held on to his seventh place by the finish, Grosjean – who ran over a kerb and off the track in the incident – dropped from eighth to 10^th place by the chequered flag.

Speaking after the Spanish F1 test which took place after the race, Magnussen says the talks have cleared the air and despite Steiner’s angry radio calls to both drivers there are “no problems”.

“There are no problems at all. We got seven points on Sunday and that’s the most we have had since Australia, so it was a good day all round,” Magnussen said.

“Guenther always sounds angry. It’s normal. No matter what he says, even if he is wishing you happy birthday! There is no problems, it’s all fine.

“I’m sure there were some heated radio messages in the race but we are fighting hard for position and there was a bit of contact, but it is what it is.”

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in Guenther’s office…#SpanishGP  #F1 pic.twitter.com/L2uXCE9pg4

— Formula 1 (@F1) May 13, 2019

Breaking down the incident in detail, Magnussen believes both the safety car restart situation and off-track moment Grosjean suffered did not trigger the French driver from losing places to McLaren’s Carlos Sainz and Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat.

“At the end of the day nothing happened between us. I got P7 and scored six points, he scored one point but could have scored more, he had the pace, but didn’t for different reasons,” he said.

“It wasn’t what happened between me and him that meant we didn’t score more points. He went off and came back on track behind me and then lost positions to other people, so it’s not that I pushed him off the track and then he lost a lot of positions – that didn’t happen.

“We were fighting hard but it looked harder than it was because we had contact on that safety car restart, which I don’t see what I could have done different and I don’t think he intended to [make contact].

“I think it was a bit of misjudgement and there were a lot of cars around and these things can happen on a safety car restart or on lap one.

“After that there was no contact. It looked worse because he went off the track and around the bollard and all that, but at the end of the day, he came back right behind me and then laps after he lost positions.”