Broken suspension on Kevin Magnussen’s Renault
Kevin Magnussen lost a large part of his running time when his rear suspension broke. Less trouble for Jolyon Palmer, but only 15th fastest in the second session.
The second red flag of the first practice session was caused by Kevin Magnussen. Indeed, the Dane also saw his tire explode on the back straight due to a suspension issue: « I encountered a suspension problem. The tire blew, but it was quite easy to control on the straight by easing off the throttle. »
The team then decided not to run him in the afternoon session to be certain of the causes of this failure. They have now been identified by the team, as explained by Nick Chester, the technical director of the team: « It was a difficult day. Kevin couldn’t do much running after the rear suspension failure in FP1. We know the reason and will have modified parts tomorrow, but it’s obviously disappointing that Kevin couldn’t get more running. »
With the six installation laps completed by the former McLaren driver, the entire program was thus shifted onto the shoulders of Jolyon Palmer. The Briton was able to complete his entire program, but he complained a lot about oversteer in the first phase of the day: « We completed the majority of our day’s program while making good progress in FP2, which is encouraging. The grip was really low in the morning, but the track rubbers in quickly, and the times will drop for everyone. We have a lot of data to analyze on both short and long runs. We’ll work on it tonight to see what we can improve for tomorrow. »
