The Monaco Grand Prix couldn’t have gone any worse for the Haas team after a surprisingly positive start to the 2024 Formula 1 season.
Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen have been given a car that’s a lot more competitive than team principal Ayao Komatsu expected when he took over from Guenther Steiner at the start of the campaign.
Martin Brundle has shared on Sky Sports F1’s website a ‘prophetic’ prediction he made ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix when talking to some of Haas’s mechanics.
They might have wished they listened to the experienced former F1 driver before the start of a race that ended before the end of the first sector on lap one.
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Martin Brundle shares details of Haas conversation ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix
Haas currently sit ahead of Williams, Alpine and Sauber in the Constructors’ Championship a third of the way through this season.
Magnussen has one championship point and 10 penalty points to his name so far this year but has played his part in his teammate’s brilliant start to the campaign.
Nico Hulkenberg is only behind Yuki Tsunoda among the drivers at the bottom five teams and has achieved four points-scoring finishes as well as three agonising 11-place results.
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The team headed to Monaco knowing how important their performances in qualifying were going to be considering how difficult overtaking is on the streets of the principality.
Both drivers reached Q2 – knocking out Fernando Alonso and Sergio Perez in the process – but failed to make it to the top-ten shootout.
That was always going to make scoring points difficult, but then they received the news that both drivers had been disqualified from qualifying for having an illegal part fitted to their rear wing.
Guenther Steiner sent the team a message in the aftermath and it meant that both cars would be lining up on the back row of the grid.
Martin Brundle has now shared the chat he had with some of the mechanics in the Haas garage before the start of the race in Monaco.
They wanted to start on the grid, but he warned they might be better off starting from the pit lane and then the events after the first corner unfolded.
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Haas involved in worst case scenario crash during the Monaco Grand Prix
Writing after the race, Brundle said: “I spoke to some Haas mechanics pre-race, and they were hoping their cars would start on the grid rather than [be] penalised into pit lane starts as they wanted to experience the Monaco grid.
“I said to them the only advantage of the pitlane start is that you can avoid first-lap incidents, which turned out to be prophetic.”
Magnussen actually got a brilliant start from the back row of the grid and went up the inside of the first corner, making up a couple of positions.
He fancied having a go at Sergio Perez ahead of him but the space on the winding straight heading to Massenet ran out and he clipped the Mexican driver’s car.
READ MORE: Martin Brundle shares who he thought was at fault for Sergio Perez crash at the Monaco Grand Prix
It caused a monumental amount of damage to the Red Bull and as he spun out of control, he clipped Hulkenberg’s car as he tried to sneak through the carnage, leading to both drivers retiring from the race.
In hindsight, Haas would have wished they could have started from the pit lane in Monaco as Brundle suggested.
Instead, they watched on as rival teams RB, Williams and Alpine all finished in the points. Komatsu won’t reflect on the race for too long and will know that it can’t get any worse in Canada.
The post ‘I spoke to’: Martin Brundle shares ‘prophetic’ talk he had with Haas mechanics before Monaco GP crash appeared first on F1 Oversteer.