Kevin Magnussen says it’s funny that he is now free to race even more aggressively than in the past at the Singapore Grand Prix, having served a one-race ban last weekend.
Oliver Bearman replaced Magnussen at Haas in Baku because the Dane had accumulated 12 penalty points within a 12-month period, leading to an automatic race suspension. The final two points were earned by light contact when trying to overtake Pierre Gasly in Monza, but with just seven rounds remaining and a clean license after the ban, Magnussen says he won’t change his approach.
“You get punished, and then you come back, and you’re like all ready to f**k s**t up now!” Magnussen said. “It’s funny how that works.
“In a way, it hasn’t really affected me. I think with those points, it was annoying to have the knowledge that the next time anything happens, there’s a race ban. It’s nice to know that’s not a factor anymore. But I actually don’t think it has affected me in how I’ve driven. I’ve really tried to say, ‘Look, I need to crack on here, and whatever happens, happens.’
“I don’t think it’s going to change anything. In that moment in Monza, in all the battles I’ve had, I’ve never found myself thinking, ‘Oh, I need to be careful here, otherwise I get a race ban.’ In those races before Baku, before the race ban, I didn’t think about it.”
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Magnussen was also critical of the way the penalty points system punishes drivers who might make mistakes when they attempt to fight on track, as he feels it will discourage hard racing.
“My own opinion is it’s not a great situation for F1, I think, to restrict racing in that way. It feels bad when the sport you love so much changes in a way you don’t appreciate,” he said. “I like hard racing, and I think that’s a big part of the beauty of motorsport, is the battles. The on-the-limit-and-slightly-over, that balance between going slightly over and under the limit is what makes your race.
“At the moment, it feels like they’re punishing ridiculous things. Personally as a Formula 1 fan, I’d like to see the sport open up again and allowing the great racing that can be seen on-track.
“The penalty points thing is… a slightly strange one. Maybe it would be better to kind of give race bans for extraordinarily dangerous driving, or for a specific incident, and not like accumulate. Because it can get into situations where you get punished harder than others because, like in my case, I came into the season with zero points, accumulated all of them, and then I knew the rest of the season that none of these points were running out.
“I actually got punished harder because of not having had any points last year. So in a way, I should have got some points last year!
“But I just think it’s a very complex thing. So for me to sit here and say, ‘We should do this, this and this, and that would be the right way forward,’ is very difficult. I’ve raced in IndyCar, I’ve watched the races on television, and I think they have it going over there. They have fantastic racing. The drivers are respectful to each other. They’re left with that responsibility in their hands, and I think that works.
“It has to be tough, and these cars are put on-track with the knowledge that they might get damaged, and if they do, the driver that damages the car, he gets penalized naturally.
“I think the only thing that is different in Formula 1 to IndyCar are the tracks. The tracks are not great for racing, with all this track limits stuff — I got all my penalty points pretty much for track limits. At the end of the day, I think that’s kind of stupid, to be a few centimeters out of a white line and end up with a race ban because of that, it’s not the sport I love.”