“It screwed us:” Safety Car period had major championship consequences for Haas · RaceFans

With four rounds to go, the fight for sixth place in the constructors’ championship looked set.

Haas, on 46 points, eyed the threat from RB, 10 points behind them. They gave little thought to Williams in eight place, much less ninth-placed Alpine, 32 points behind.

Then came Brazil, where a windfall result for Alpine more than tripled their points haul at a stroke, lifting them to sixth in the standings.

Haas hit back immediately. Nico Hulkenberg’s eighth place in Las Vegas, while Alpine failed to score, restored them to sixth place. His seventh place in the sprint race in Losail nudged Haas’s lead up to three points.

Come the grand prix, the fight for sixth place in the championship was fought out between Kevin Magnussen and Pierre Gasly. The Haas and Alpine drivers held the bottom two points positions after passing Yuki Tsunoda’s RB.

Wary that Alpine might pull Gasly in for an early pit stop and get him on to fresh tyres sooner, Haas summoned Magnussen in on after 27 laps for a set of hard tyres. But even with a useful pocked of clear air behind Liam Lawson, Magnussen wasn’t quite able to match Gasly’s times on his harder tyres. It was going to be close.

But then a wing mirror fell of Alexander Albon’s Williams and landed on the run to the first corner. Race control avoided deploying the Safety Car to begin with, but then Valtteri Bottas smashed it into pieces and two drivers sustained punctures, which forced their hand.

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With the Safety Car deployed, every driver who hadn’t changed tyres yet headed for the pits. Magnussen was among those who suffered the most: Besides losing his chance to get back ahead of Gasly, he also fell behind Fernando Alonso and Zhou Guanyu. Although he impressively out-ran the recovering Lando Norris, ninth place to Gasly’s fifth put Alpine ahead again by five points heading into the final round.

“I’m super gutted with the Safety Car coming out,” said Magnussen afterwards, “it completely ruined the day for me. It was going well and we had a good beginning to the race, but I just wish that Safety Car hadn’t come out because it really screwed us. There’s still one race to go and we’ll go into it giving everything.”

Haas brought Magnussen in long before a Safety Car looked like an imminent threat. But McLaren’s decision to pull Oscar…