Haas point was ‘huge’ as Magnussen plays his part for Hulkenberg

Haas scoring a point in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was a “huge” result for the team as it capitalized on strong pace at the start of the season, according to Kevin Magnussen.

The Dane picked up two penalties during the race in Jeddah -- the first for contact with Alex Albon -- but then delivered a masterclass in defensive driving to hold off a number of faster cars behind him and create a gap that allowed teammate Nico Hulkenberg to emerge ahead after a pit stop. Hulkenberg finished tenth as a result, and Magnussen says he he’s glad to have played his part in getting Haas on the board.

“Maybe the first [penalty], I didn’t mean to have contact,” Magnussen said. “The wall sort of comes back at you and I just judged it badly and we had contact, unfortunately. It is what it is. We showed good pace; unfortunate that I had another penalty with [Yuki] Tsunoda, so that’s not a great day for me of course, but then I think I made up for it with the effort on keeping everyone behind to create a gap for Nico to pit.

“He scored a point, so that’s super-important. Right now I’m not driving for a drivers’ championship so the real fight is in the constructors’ and I’m glad that we scored a point.

“It’s huge. I think we really earned it and I think it’s really positive that we have the pace -- the second race in a row that we have good pace.”

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Hulkenberg acknowledged the work done by Magnussen to help his strategy work, but also says the point was particularly hard to come by because of the margin the top five of Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Aston Martin hold over the rest of the field.

“I feel happy, obviously, because I scored a point and it’s very tough these days,” Hulkenberg said. “It takes one of the top five cars to drop out, which obviously happened and we managed to capitalize on that. I think very good strategy from the team -- we split the cars under the safety car -- then good pace from myself and good work obviously from Kevin who was playing the team game, helping me a lot in my race. That was the foundation to be able to score points.

“It’s very important. It’s very tight, especially in the midfield. So far it looks like the top five teams have a big edge over everyone else, and so that’s ten cars. There’s not many opportunities to score points. I mean, one point is one point -- it’s obviously not a huge amount, but better one than none.”