Magnussen failure caused by broken hydraulic pipe

Magnussen had looked set for a points finish in the Red Bull Ring when his car suddenly hit trouble after losing all its hydraulics.

Having investigated the matter after the race, team boss Gunther Steiner has revealed that the issue was created by the hydraulic pipe to Magnussen’s DRS getting cut through after rubbing on another part of the car.

“An hydraulic pipe was shaved through,” he said. “The pipe was going to the DRS system and he lost all the hydraulic fluid, so that was it. He lost all the hydraulics, the gearshift didn’t work and there was no oil any more.

“It looks like the pipe was touching on a washer and after a while they bump [together] and it shaved the pipe.”

Steiner suspects that the unprecedented issue could be related to a new rear wing design that the team put on the car in Baku.

“It was a new installation with a new rear wing which we put on Baku, which was why it didn’t happen before," he said. "We will fix it.”

Steiner had no doubts that Haas could have been set for a two-car finish as Magnussen was battling for the top 10 – even having been hindered in the opening stages by overheating caused by a piece of track side debris getting lodged in his radiator.

“He was going to finish ninth or 10th, we were right on it,” said Steiner.

“The car was overheating early on, and if everything had been normal then we could have attacked more – but we had to let it go a little bit because this piece of Styrofoam had got caught in the cooling ducts after the first lap. So it wasn’t his lucky day.”

Magnussen’s teammate Romain Grosjean did at least give Haas something to smile about with a sixth placed finish, as the leader of the pack behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull.

“What else could we do?” said Steiner. “We were best of the rest, and that is what it is. Romain did a good job and everything went fine.”