McLaren Mercedes
Kevin Magnussen says he is hoping to recover places in the Russian Grand Prix after being beset by misfortune on Saturday at the Sochi Autodrom.
Magnussen was a front runner in Friday practice but his car snapped sideways in the third session with an apparent technical problem and the Dane was forced to abandon his car trackside.
While he recovered to qualify in sixth place, Magnussen will drop to 11th place as a result of a five place penalty for a gearbox change.
"Today hasn’t been a good day. We didn’t get anything out of FP3 – as Jenson says we went the wrong way on set-up – but, even so, this afternoon things felt pretty good for me in Q1 and Q2," he said.
"In Q3, however, the car felt very different. As a result I wasn’t able to get near the time I’d set in Q2, so we’ll need to look into what happened there.
"Overall, though, our pace has been a bit better than usual here, so it’s obviously a shame for us to have been hit with a five-place grid penalty."
"Even so, I hope we’ll be able to make good progress in the race. It won’t be easy, because we’ll be starting quite far back, but at least overtaking is possible here: moreover, there’s a good DRS zone, and quite a long straight down to Turn Two, and our long-run pace hasn’t been too bad, so all in all I’m fairly positive we’ll be able to make up some position."
