Haas admits “too much risk” led to Magnussen's US GP DSQ

Kevin Magnussen was disqualified from the United States Grand Prix because the Haas Formula 1 squad took “too much risk” with its fuel usage, says team boss Gunther Steiner.

Magnussen was excluded from the Austin results for exceeding the 105kg fuel limit by just 170 grams, after finishing sandwiched between the Force India duo of Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez in ninth place.

Steiner has since admitted Haas knew it was on the limit of F1’s fuel regulations and was hoping the issue would have been eased if Magnussen had been lapped by race-winner Kimi Raikkonen - a scenario which did not unfold.

“We used too much fuel, to say the obvious,” Steiner explained to media ahead of this weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix.

“We tried to attack Ocon and it didn’t work out. Even if we had passed him we could had save afterwards more but we kept on attacking.

“We just ran too much risk, it was our own fault. We took too much risk and it went this way. But there is a point where you need to attack, you cannot always just sit behind and see what is happening.

“We did it and lost out on it, we take the responsibility and move on and try to do better here. There is a regret but there’s no regret on what we actually did.”

Steiner admitted that “with hindsight” conceding a position to Perez and allowing Magnussen to conserve more fuel while still finishing inside the points would have been a better option, though he attached no blame to his driver.

“He did what he needed to do, it wasn’t down to him because he cannot see the numbers - it’s just ‘lift and coast, lift and coast’, the numbers we see how much he has to do,” he added.

“The driver, you cannot blame him he didn’t do enough, because then when he gets overtaken it would be ‘why didn’t you push a little bit more’. It’s one of those things. The number we see, not him, so I don’t blame him for it.”

Haas is looking to overtake Renault in the tight battle over fourth place in the constructors’ championship and Steiner conceded the intensity of the midfield scrap probably played its part in the error.

“I think that’s the reason we did this - if we would be safe in fourth or impossible to catch fourth, why would we take this risk?

“So that is why racing is what it is. Racing should be racing, in my opinion. We run hard because we wanted to achieve something. We ran out.”