Kevin Magnussen was furious with Daniil Kvyat after the Toro Rosso driver crashed into him early in the race.
The Renault driver started the race in 16th place under the Safety Car whilst Kvyat endured a nightmare start from ninth place when his Toro Rosso was stuck at a limited speed forcing him to drop down the field and pit a couple of times before ending up a lap down on the field almost immediately. After the Safety Car pitted, Kvyat attempted to regain lost time and clumsily tried to overtake Magnussen at Rascasse causing a collision.
After the race, race stewards handed Kvyat a three-place grid penalty for the next race in Canada and two penalty points. Meanwhile, Magnussen vented his frustration to formula1.com about the crash caused by the Russian driver: “Unfortunately, Kvyat just lost his mind and crashed into me and that was effectively the end of my race.”
Magnussen himself hit the barrier at Mirabeau later in the race and eventually retired from the race. The Dane described his afternoon in Monaco: “[We] made a really good strategic call to change to intermediate tyres just after the safety car. We were the only ones to do it so early and it was the right decision. We were in a good position as a lot of people were still to pit and we gained a lot of places.
“We did continue [after the collision with Kvyat] and made an early change to slicks as we had nothing to lose, but ultimately I hit the wall and damaged the front wing. We were several laps down at that point and the car had been in the wars so it was safer to retire.”
The Renault driver now looks forward to the next race in Canada in a fortnight where he is optimistic the updates to his car will see the team have stronger results: “Now we have to shift our focus to Canada and have a better weekend there. Montreal should be a stronger track for us and should play to the strengths of the updates for the car.”
