Kevin Magnussen is keen to put his time with Renault behind him and hopes to keep his old team behind him on track as well.
Though he enjoyed his time at Renault, the Dane admitted the team had problems which he doesn’t expect to be solved anytime soon. He also dismissed claims Renault Sport’s managing director, Cyril Abiteboul, made in Auto Hebdo magazine suggesting Magnussen had disappointed at Renault and come up with excuses to explain his performance.
“I think it’s easy to say that someone is making excuses,” Magnussen told Sky Sports. “I’ve said what I think and I’ve made my opinion clear about certain things and he was unhappy about it.
“It’s fair enough. I can’t stop him from being with me, but it became a very public matter, which I regret a bit.
“I prefer things to be, if you are unhappy about something, keep it between the person you are unhappy with, which he didn’t do.
“He didn’t keep it between me and him, he went public with it, and that’s his way of doing things. That’s fair enough with me.”
Magnussen won’t be holding grudges against Abiteboul or Renault but is intent on beating his old team next season.
“It’s important that we beat them, and I think we can do that,” he said. “With the problems they have, it’s going to take a long time for them to improve.
“As I’ve said all the time, they have some very good people and it’s a great bunch of guys there that I enjoyed spending my time with all last year, and made many friends there.”
The 24-year-old didn’t expand on what the problems at his old team are, saying it doesn’t really matter to him anymore, but he did describe the small, core team he had been introduced to at Haas as refreshing.
Magnussen joins the American outfit only a year into their F1 project and believes the small team can be as effective, or even more effective, as those he’s already raced with.
“I’ve seen how resources aren’t everything, at all. You can have so many people, if they don’t work together then it doesn’t mean anything. So completely going back to the core of a race team, which this is, it shows you how it should be really built up. You can’t just throw people at a project and expect it to deliver.
“It’s been interesting to see the difference.”
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