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Haas Formula 1 team principal Gunther Steiner does not understand why Kevin Magnussen has been tagged with a “wild” reputation or why people think he fades away over a season.
Magnussen was on the receiving end of criticism from several rivals for his robust driving last year, which included a famous row with Fernando Alonso during qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix.
But Steiner, who re-signed Magnussen to a new contract for 2019 and beyond, thinks the perception of his driver does not match reality.
“Let’s put that one right: he is the guy with the least penalties,” said Steiner, referring to the fact that Magnussen has only two penalty points on his licence. Romain Grosjean, Lance Stroll and Max Verstappen top that table on seven points each.
“He somehow got such a bad reputation and the perception is out there that he’s this guy which is just wild. Which is wrong.
“Because look at the statistics. We must be objective. Not subjective. Objective is: how many penalties has he got?”
Steiner thinks it is also wrong to suggest that Magnussen always struggles in the second half of a season, despite a more difficult end to 2018.
“There is this thing out there that Kevin Magnussen’s second half of the season always is bad,” he said. “Again, where is this coming from?
“He has done some good races in the second half of the season [in 2018].
“Was he as good as the first half? No. But I would not jump to the conclusion that it has to be like this.
“I don’t think he is as bad as people make him out to be. He’s a racer. He drives. He fights for his territory.
“And that’s what we pay him to do actually. We don’t want somebody who gets passed by everybody.”
Steiner also argued that perceptions of Magnussen’s team-mate Grosjean’s poor first half of 2018 had been blown out of proportion.
Grosjean did not score until the Austrian GP at the start of July last year, and had a number of early accidents.
“Let’s not exaggerate. It was not huge, tremendous or whatever. He had a dip. Leave it at that. It was a dip,” said Steiner of Grosjean’s early-2018 experiences.
Steiner said Grosjean’s mid-season improvement was “all about ‘the key’. He lost the key, he found the key. I don’t know what it is and that’s honest. He said: ‘I found the key again’. Since then it was good.”
Asked if he was ever worried that Grosjean would not be able to recover his form, Steiner replied: “My thinking was not in a way negative that he wouldn’t find it. For me it was more like: ‘how can I get him back to how we know him?’.”