Renault driver Kevin Magnussen has confirmed that a suspension failure caused his puncture during first practice at the Shanghai International Circuit in China.
Felipe Massa suffered two punctures during FP1, before Magnussen’s left-rear tyre also failed. There were concerns it was a problem with Pirelli’s tyres but the supplier said the issues were caused by technical woes.
Magnussen was forced to sit out of the second session due to the damage his RS16 sustained. The cause of the first practice problem has now been revealed, following investigations.
"I had a suspension failure on the car, and that led to the tyre going," he explained. "It was fairly easy to control as I was going straight, not in a corner, so I just lifted.
"Otherwise I did some installation laps and some aero runs this morning which are always useful data-wise but I have plenty to do tomorrow morning in terms of what I can learn from the track and the car.
"It might rain as well, whereas the race is likely to be dry so this isn’t shaping up to be the straight-forward weekend I was wishing for but we’ll get there regardless."
His team-mate Jolyon Palmer finished 17th and 15th in the two sessions: "We got through the majority of our programme today and made some good progress in FP2 so that’s encouraging.
"For us, we have plenty of data to analysing from both short and long runs. We’ll work on things tonight to see where we can improve for tomorrow."
