Haas F1 duo insist relationship won’t be hurt by clash

Romain Grosjean says his relationship with Haas Formula 1 teammate Kevin Magnussen will not be affected by their Spanish Grand Prix collision.

The pair twice made contact as they battled for position in the closing stages of the race in Barcelona, with Magnussen finishing seventh, while Grosjean slipped to 10th place.

Despite claiming its first double points finish of the season, Haas felt it had needlessly thrown away points and team principal Guenther Steiner immediately called a post-race meeting to discuss the situation.

“It was an avoidable situation and things could have been done a better way but saying that, it’s all OK, it’s racing,” Grosjean said.

“Monday I was not happy. And maybe [felt it was] disrespectful. Then you calm down and it’s just one race out of 21. The biggest loss was for the team, because we lost three points. We could have lost two cars in a year that’s been a rollercoaster.

“But the relationship is OK, we just have to accept that Kevin is quite aggressive, even with his teammate, and I’ll make sure we protect the inside line and don’t think about trying to get people in front but protecting more from your teammate.

“It was all clear, it’s been good with Kevin, we won’t take two and a half years for one incident. The relationship is good. It’s not the most clever thing to do but the relationship is still OK, it’s still good - don’t worry!”

Magnussen said there was no blame pinned on one driver over the other and insisted the meeting passed without drama.

“It was good,” he explained. “I always enjoy hanging out with those guys and there are no issues. It’s good that you talk things through as a team but there is no drama.”

Asked how calm team principal Guenther Steiner was on a scale of 1-10, Magnussen joked: “Guenther scale or normal scale?

“It was really more just to understand and get our opinion on what happened because we may have a similar situation in the future and it’s always important to see if there’s anything you can do better or different, but I don’t see any drama.”

Steiner admitted it will be hard to prevent such an incident from occurring again.

“You can never make sure it never happens again,” he said.

“We lost a few points, which you can never be happy with obviously. It’s a fine line. I think they fought hard, but they didn’t try to push each other intentionally. That for me was the decision.

“We need to talk about this, but I’m not going to sit there and try to be a judge, and say you did this one wrong. Where do you stop from where is racing and where is wrong-doing? They both agreed, saying you did this, and they spoke between them.

“In the end, the atmosphere was like ‘yeah, maybe we pushed a little bit too hard,' but in the heat of the moment, it’s racing,” he added.

“We’ve got two drivers which are always close to each other, in each grand prix. This year they are always very close, except one race, we are always there together, which means they are both strong.

“It is more difficult to manage, but it is good, because we are always performing. What do you want, I’d rather have added performance and a little bit of a headache on Sunday to keep me awake than anything else.”