Magnussen downbeat after poor qualifying display

McLaren driver Kevin Magnussen has made no secret of his annoyance after qualifying down in 15th place for tomorrow’s Chinese Grand Prix.

The Danish driver, who is currently taking part in his debut season in Formula 1, made a great start to the year in Australia by finishing second. However, since then, he has scored just two points, having struggled for pace in Malaysia and retired from the Bahrain Grand Prix two weeks ago.

If he had any hopes of scoring some more points in China this weekend, they have been dealt a huge blow after he failed to get to grips with the wet conditions on Saturday afternoon.

“I’m pretty disappointed to have qualified 15th,” Magnussen said. “It’s not great.

“I don’t really know what happened, we had issues with overall grip. I’m not sure if it was the tires not being in the correct working temperature range.”

Despite this result, Magnussen is confident that the position is not representative of both his and McLaren’s potential, and he believes that with some work the team can understand what caused such a poor performance.

“We’ll go back and look at things,” he said. “I believe we’re better than 15th, so we clearly didn’t get everything right today. Still, we’re not fast enough and we need to find more speed.

“The team is doing a good job of improving things, but it just takes time. These things aren’t fixed overnight, but I have faith in the team.

“We’ll get there. We’ll see what we can do in the race tomorrow.”

Jenson Button also endured a difficult Saturday in Shanghai, qualifying down in 12th position. McLaren will be hoping that – with a slice of luck and perhaps some dry running – a good haul of points is still possible tomorrow.

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