Why Albon and Gasly were irritated by Magnussen’s “grey area” Dutch GP defence

Alex Albon reckons a “grey area” over braking in the middle of corners to hold up following cars during races will eventually cause a crash, in response to Kevin Magnussen’s defence at the Dutch Grand Prix.

Magnussen was running on a contra-strategy to the majority of the field to get track position on a long hard-tyre stint, and had attempted to keep a following pack of Pierre Gasly, Albon, and the two Aston Martins of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll behind him.

The Dane was eventually flooded by overtakes at the end of lap 39, with Albon being heard to remark on team radio that Magnussen’s defence had been “dangerous”.

The timing of Albon’s radio message appeared to focus on the Haas driver’s exit of Turn 14, to which TV commentators appeared to give short shrift, but analysis of Magnussen’s throttle and brake traces show Albon had reason to be aggrieved.

GPS data shows that Magnussen lifted off more compared to other drivers over the 39th lap before being overtaken. Using Nico Hulkenberg’s same lap as a benchmark, given he was running in free air at the time, offers a datum point for how a representative car can be driven on a lap of the Zandvoort circuit.

Albon began the lap 0.4s behind Magnussen, but lost a half-second to Magnussen in Turns 2 and 3; the latter braked for Turn 2 earlier, stalling Albon out between it and the banked Turn 3 as the Williams driver could not get fully on the throttle for the intermediate stretch. Both Hulkenberg and Magnussen managed this.

More obvious is Magnussen’s throttle trace through the Turns 4-5-6 uphill sweepers, where he was at less than 80% throttle through Turn 4 (Albon and Hulkenberg are both flat) and then fully lifts off in the middle of Turn 6. Again, Hulkenberg is fully flat at this point, while Albon has to lift slightly in response to Magnussen. On the exit of the corner, there is around a 25kph (15.5mph) difference in speed between Magnussen and Albon.

This forces Albon to brake slightly earlier for Turn 7 than usual. Since Magnussen is slower into the corner, he brakes less, but nonetheless earlier than Hulkenberg’s equivalent braking trace for the right-hander.

Magnussen is fully off-throttle for a brief moment again on the exit of the corner, again forcing Albon to release the throttle pedal once again in response to the Haas ahead of him. This again occurs sooner than either Magnussen or…