Haas team boss Guenther Steiner says it was “the right thing to do” to keep Kevin Magnussen in front of Mick Schumacher during Formula 1 Sprint in Austria.
Magnussen and Schumacher held seventh and eighth respectively during Sprint but were gradually reeled in by a recovering Lewis Hamilton.
Schumacher was able to keep Hamilton behind for several laps, assisted by receiving the DRS from Magnussen, but after the Dane moved clear he lost the use of the device.
Schumacher was overhauled by Hamilton and suggested post-race that he was involved in a battle “that shouldn’t have happened” in the first place.
Steiner explained to media post-race that “we knew pretty well what was going on, knew where we were, and to get points for the team we had to do what we did and it was the right thing to do.”
On whether there was any consideration to swap the drivers prior to Hamilton catching Steiner retorted: “It wouldn’t have worked, because he [Schumacher] wasn’t faster…you are faster because you are in DRS.
“We spoke about this before the race and I explained to them it will be that if you can come out after the start behind each other the second one thinks he is faster because you are 0.9s of a second faster because of DRS effect.
“That doesn’t make you faster because as soon as you go in front the other one is 0.9s faster, then as soon as you let someone by with Lewis so close he would sneak by as well and then get us after!
“We monitored everything and we did the complete right thing because otherwise we would have gone out of the points with both cars or maximum maybe only achieved one point.”
Magnussen’s seventh place enabled Haas to close to within five points of AlphaTauri in the standings.
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