Was Magnussen’s Canadian GP assessment correct after early heroics?

From 14th on the grid, Magnussen found the extreme wet tyre particularly potent in the first six laps when the circuit was at its most slippery, and carved his way up to fourth by the end of lap three.

That put him in touching distance of the top three but, as the circuit began to dry out, the crossover point between intermediates and wets began to close in.

In measuring Magnussen’s early tours versus those of Oscar Piastri, whom the Dane had passed for fourth, that crossover point arrived on lap six: Magnussen set a 1m34.673s, Piastri a 1m33.060s, which prompted Haas to bring Magnussen in on the following lap for intermediates.

So, one might think that it was the right call for Magnussen to come in – he’d now started lapping slower than the cars ahead. A slow pitstop rather hurt his chances and cost him track position, but he shook out in 13th nonetheless to at least make a position.

“It was looking good,” he explained post-race. “We took the right choice on the full wets – but then I think we pitted off onto the inter too early because we ended up having to take another inter. We could have stretched that full wet, to then go on to the inter and stay on it instead.

“On top of that, we had a very slow pit stop. It felt like we had some opportunity there – but didn’t get anything out of it.

“We didn’t try and take any crazy gamble or anything. We just did what we felt was right for the conditions. And it looked okay, so I think we did the right thing there to begin with but – then didn’t back it up with the right decisions thereafter.”

Haas tried to go longer with Nico Hulkenberg’s stint, and the German hung on until lap 12 having made his own ascent up the field to seventh. After the sixth-lap cross-over, Hulkenberg was lapping between 1-1.5 seconds slower than Daniel Ricciardo behind, before the Australian eventually took back control of eighth on lap 11.

But Hulkenberg was battling a car he noted was “not fully healthy”, so it stands to reason that Magnussen might have been able to have gained a few tenths over his team-mate’s range of times in the 1m34s. It seemed like Haas had timed its Magnussen stop to limit the damage of the time taken to pit while the field spread was sufficient, but the slow stop cost about five to six seconds and the timing meant that Magnussen needed to stop again…