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Magnussen: Consistency will determine the midfield battle

19:14, 05 Jul 2018

byJake Williams-Smith

Kevin Magnussen believes that Haas' battle for fourth will come down to consistency. The American outfit have been impressing everyone in 2018 with a stronger package and better performances compared to recent years, and the Dane thinks it will take even more to secure fourth in the constructor standings.

Up until the Austrian Grand Prix, Magnussen had been the sole source of Haas' points, but he knows that it will take more than one-off points scoring weekends from either himself or teammate Romain Grosjean for Haas to win best of the rest.

“I think we’ve certainly got the car to compete for fourth, at least at many of the races but the thing that will decide this championship is consistency,” he said.

“With us still learning a lot, gaining a lot of experience, still being on the steep end of the learning curve, that will be the challenge. I am not saying we can’t do it, we’ve got the car and the talent in the team to do it but we just need to string it together.

“We are more consistent this year,” Magnussen added. “Last year we were best of the rest at a few races and then other times we were fighting with Saubers who were even worse last year. You don’t see the Saubers going straight away going to the fourth best car so we had that kind of that potential in the car but we couldn’t extract it very often.

“This year we seem to be able to extract it a bit more often and so far this year we’ve been able to do it nearly every time. We’ve had two races that were kinda off and the rest of the time we have been very competitive.”

His consistency this season has been impressive, earning vital points and launching himself up to seventh in the driver's championship.