Kevin Magnussen says that he apologised to Pierre Gasly for a second time in text form after the two came together in Baku. At a late safety car restart in the Azerbaijan race, Gasly was squeezed into the wall by Magnussen at high speed.
Magnussen was handed a ten second time penalty for the incident, and Gasly branding the Dane as "the most dangerous driver I've ever raced with". However, the Toro Rosso driver revealed that Magnussen sent an apology message after the race.
"He sent me a text after the weekend just to apologise once again,” he said. “I was frustrated after the race and didn’t really listen to him so he sent me a message. We’re all clear now. We just need to make sure we don’t face a similar situation again because in the end it wasn’t good for both of us.
"It probably damaged even more his car, it damaged my car, so we missed an opportunity to get points which was my main frustration because there was potentially one or two points possible for us.”
The ten second time penalty solidified Magnussen's place as the last classified driver to cross the line in Baku. Haas team principal Guenther Steiner said he was able to sleep easy with the penalty decision but never expected it to be any more than ten seconds.
"I [found out about] it in the evening,” said Steiner. “I slept very well because we got our penalty, they cannot give you more penalty because somebody else wants less penalty. I didn’t know from the Williams side why they did it, they must have had their reasons and I respect that.
"They tried to do something. I think their aim was to reduce [Sergey] Sirotkin’s penalty and not to get ours higher. I was interested, obviously, because it’s my job, but I was not paranoid or afraid or anything,” he added.
Fergal Walsh
Kean
Posts: 692
They're still driving really fast, and need to respect one another, FP1 or not. And please, I would ask you to refrain from calling me dumb or using other profanities when addressing me or other commentators on this web site. Shut it if you are unable to use a civil tone.