"Kevin Magnussen isn’t happy while Nico Hulkenberg is": Haas team principal after an impressive Friday at the F1 British GP
Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu shared mixed feedback from Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen after an impressive start to the weekend. The team has brought a whole raft of upgrades this weekend in a bid to make improvements to the car.
Nico Hulkenberg tried the old car in FP1 and then tried the car with upgrades on and felt the difference. The difference was evident in the lap times as well, as Hulkenberg produced a stunner on the soft tire run that had him in the top 5 by the time the session ended.
Haas is coming to the F1 British GP after an impressive race weekend in Austria, where Nico Hulkenberg scored a P6 and Kevin Magnussen backed him up with a points finish as well. Coming to Silverstone, the team is hoping to score points once again with the upgraded car.
Recapping the day, Ayao Komatsu was quite happy with how the overall running went, even though he did reveal that the two drivers had somewhat divergent feedback at the end of the day. He said,
"Nico drove the previous package in FP1 and we gave him the update for FP2, and he felt the difference immediately. There are certain things that we still need to work on but for a baseline run, we were happy with what we saw. On Kevin’s side, the story isn’t the same as he felt a difference in car behavior this weekend compared to Spielberg, but he wasn’t happy with the car."
He added,
"We’ve got lots of work to do to find out why Kevin isn’t happy while Nico is. Overall, it’s been a largely successful day; we got the data and we’ve now got driver feedback, but the unsuccessful part is that Kevin isn’t happy with the car and that’s something we will work on tonight.”
Nico Hulkenberg sees progress with the upgraded Haas
Nico Hulkenberg was quite happy with how his day went in the car. The German ran both FP1 and FP2, while Kevin Magnussen had to sit out in the first session for Ollie Bearman. Looking back at the running on Friday, Nico was quite positive and felt that Haas upgrades made a difference. He said,
“It was a good Friday. In the morning we ran the previous spec car and during the break, the team put the update on ahead of FP2. There are certainly some differences, it felt positive from the get-go, but there’s obviously still more to look at and optimize around it, but the first impression is positive and that’s important and valuable."
Nico had a P6 finish in the F1 Austrian GP, and it helped propel Haas to P7 in the championship. The German will be hoping to keep the momentum going as the American team tries to extract the best possible results from the car this season.