Magnussen: Haas can beat Renault to 4th in championship fight

Haas' Kevin Magnussen believes that his team can beat Renault to fourth place in the Formula One constructor standings. The American team are currently in fifth one place behind Renault but Magnussen is sure that the deficit can be overturned in the second phase of the season.

Speaking ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix, Magnussen admitted that improvements were going to be needed in the second half of the season but that the team had identified where they can make the difference in the fight against Renault.

"It’s possible (to get fourth), we’ve been faster in qualifying, so we can certainly qualify ahead of them," Magnussen is quoted by Motorsportweek.

"They seem to get a bit more out of the races, and score more points than us. That’s a fact. We need to improve our consistency still in the races. 

"We’re very consistent in qualifying, that’s the thing we have improved the most since last year. We need a more consistent performance in the race."

The Dane also admitted that the start of the season was a struggle for the team, but that updates and fixes for those problems have enabled Haas to contend for the best of the rest spot in 2018.

"I think in the beginning of the year we saw a bit of a weakness in low-speed corners. 

"We saw it in Monaco as well but that was a bit special because we damaged the car and didn’t have any spare parts. That was an outlier. 

"In Canada with the new upgrade as well, at the low-speed track we were struggling a bit. We’ll see. It feels like we’ve made some progress. 

"We’ve seen on the last couple of tracks in the low-speed corners we’ve seen some progress, so hoping to see some more progress there."