The Haas driver received three separate penalties for his battle with Lewis Hamilton, his aggressive defending and for repeatedly taking advantage of going beyond the permitted track limits.
Magnussen had already used a similar tactic at the beginning of the season in Saudi Arabia, where, once penalised, he defended himself quite aggressively to allow his teammate Nico Hulkenberg to gain an advantage and take home a position in the points.
After the Sprint, Magnussen told Sky Sports F1: “All the penalties are deserved. I started using these stupid tactics, which I don’t like, but in the end I did my job to help the team.”
After receiving three 10-second penalties for his infringements, Magnussen was summoned by the stewards to determine whether, given his comments to the television microphones, his maneuvers should be considered unsportsmanlike behavior.
A stewards’ report explains: “The driver explained candidly that he believed he had the right to race against car 44 in the way he did and that he was willing to accept what he considered to be the standard penalties that would have been imposed on him for any infraction that occurred while he was jockeying for position.”
“He also believed that creating space between himself and the cars in front of him was perfectly compliant with the regulations and that it was not uncommon for a driver to try to help his teammate during the course of a race.”
Kevin Magnussen, Haas F1 Team, on the grid
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
“He never thought that what he was doing was wrong or that it was in any way unsportsmanlike. He also stressed that stewards do not usually increase the severity of sanctions for repeated infractions.”
A rule change coming?
The stewards concluded that, as there was “no clear evidence of an intention to behave in a manner that could be described as unsportsmanlike” and due to the high standards set for determining unsportsmanlike actions, it was not necessary to take further action against Magnussen.
However, the document highlighted that the stewards did not agree with the way the number 20 car was driven.
Given Magnussen’s repeated infringements, the report suggested that changes to the regulations would be discussed to give stewards more power to increase the severity of punishments applied to drivers.
“In the future, stewards will have to assess whether, in appropriate situations, especially in the case of repeated infringements, it is necessary to increase the penalties to be applied for each infringement, to discourage scenarios such as those we encountered today. This is an aspect that we will raise explicitly with the FIA,” the report explains.
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