Kevin Magnussen has been summoned by the stewards for his conduct during the Miami Grand Prix sprint.
Haas driver Kevin Magnussen is under investigation by the stewards for unsportsmanlike behaviour during today’s sprint race in Miami which ultimately resulted to multiple time penalties.
The 31-year-old collected four penalties after he battled to hold off Lewis Hamilton behind him as he played the team game to protect Haas team-mate Nico Hulkenberg ahead.
Magnussen was given four penalties totaling five seconds for going over the track limits on four separate occasions, in addition to three consecutive 10-second penalties for exiting the track and gaining an advantage during his battle with Lewis Hamilton.
Magnussen fell from 10th position on the road to 18th and last as a result of the 35 seconds of penalties in total. The Haas driver simply blamed his “stupid tactics” for the penalties.
Hulkenberg secured two points for the team after finishing seventh. Magnussen clarified that he was attempting to defend against a fleet of cars in order to assist Hulkenberg ahead as he did at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in Jeddah earlier in the season.
“All the penalties were well-deserved – no doubt about it – but I had to play the game again,” Magnussen told Sky after the sprint race. “I was in a very good position behind Nico there.
“At the beginning of the race, I gained a lot of positions, I was up in P8. I protected well from Lewis, because I had DRS from Nico and I had good pace, I felt.
“But then Nico cut the chicane, and I lost the DRS and Nico could have given that back to give me the DRS to protect, because then we would have easily been P7 and P8. Instead I was really vulnerable to Lewis, started fighting with him like crazy.”
Magnussen acknowledged that he didn’t enjoy racing the way he did during the sprint race.
“I had to just create the gap like I did in Jeddah and start using these stupid tactics, which I don’t like doing,” he said. “But at the end of the day I did my job as a team player and Nico scored his points because I got that gap for him, so Lewis and Tsunoda couldn’t catch him. So not the way I like to go racing at all, but what I had to do today.”
Following his remarks, Magnussen was the subject of an additional investigation by the stewards due to “alleged unsportsmanlike behaviour.” The International Sporting Code forbids “any infringement of the principles of fairness in competition, behavior in an unsportsmanlike manner, or attempt to influence the result of a competition in a way that is contrary to sporting ethics,” and they are investigating if he violated this rule.
As a result of his four in-race penalties, Magnussen is probably going to accumulate further penalty points on his superlicence. Currently, he is just under halfway with five points to the 12 points needed to automatically be banned from racing.
