FIA criticized: "You’ve got to let us drive with that s***, it’s nothing"

Kevin Magnussen started the Canadian Grand Prix from fifth place and for a moment he seemed to make even more progress at the start. The Dane briefly looked at Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes, but in the end he did not get past. He sustained some damage in the duel and the FIA ordered him to go in for a new front wing. Magnussen doesn't think it makes any sense.

Esteban Ocon was stuck behind Magnussen in the opening stages of the race and informed his team over the board radio that a small part of the Haas F1 driver's front wing might come loose. Ocon's reading was that that could cause safety problems and the FIA went along with that reading. Magnussen was told he had to make a mandatory pit stop from sixth place.

Magnussen criticizes FIA

Magnussen was very disappointed when he heard the news, because such an early stop was fatal for his chances of finishing in the top-ten and thus scoring World Championship points. "I was just talking to Ocon now and he was just joking how he told the FIA that it was really bad. If you know you can influence the FIA like that, you’re going to do it, aren’t you? Which is what he did. Fair play. But you’ve got to let us drive with that s***, it’s nothing," he is clear in his words at RACER.

Magnussen would have preferred to continue driving, because according to him the damage had no impact on the performance of the car and the part had certainly not broken down. He points to the inconsistency of the race control and stewards. "Monaco they don’t start us because it starts drizzling. Here I’m called in because I have a scratch on my front wing…”

Magnussen has been dry for a while

The current world championship number twelve eventually crossed the finish line in seventeenth place at the Gilles Villeneuve Circuit. For Magnussen, it mark his fifth Grand Prix in a row in which he failed to finish in the top-ten. His last points finish already dates from two months ago in Imola.