Kevin Magnussen may have blitzed the field with a time over 1.5 seconds quicker than second placed Nico Hulkenberg on the second day of testing, but the Danish driver isn’t reading much into it and says the focus is on reliability after a difficult morning.
The 21-year-old only completed eight laps in the opening four hours thanks to an ‘IT issue’ which left the MP4-29 garage-bound. However with that fixed, he eventually completed 46 laps in total and he hailed the afternoon a success.
“It’s a dream every time I get in the car: it’s just so cool to be here and to be driving. I’m really enjoying it,” he said.
“The team is doing a great job to help me: they’re giving me really good guidance and making me feel confident.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t get too many laps done this morning, but it was good to get some laps done at the end of the day. The afternoon was good for us, and we worked through our problems.”
He’s not reading into his best lap of 1:34.910 which was just 2.5 seconds slower than Nico Rosberg’s pole position lap from the 2013 Bahrain Grand Prix.
“There’s a lot of discussion about lap times, and it feels good to get some good times recorded, but winter testing is just that – testing. It isn’t about times.
“We’re still learning a lot about the car. We have four more days of testing next week and there’s still a lot of work to do. I’m sure everything up and down the pitlane will change a lot between now and Australia.”
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