Rival team boss calls for Kevin Magnussen race ban for ‘completely unacceptable’ behaviour

Kevin Magnussen, Haas driver.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella believes behaviour of the kind Kevin Magnussen showed in Miami should be punished with a race ban.

The Haas driver was given multiple time penalties for his robust defence against Lewis Hamilton, while leaving the track and gaining an advantage on multiple occasions throughout Saturday’s Sprint at the Miami Grand Prix.

Andrea Stella calls for race bans for ‘completely unacceptable’ Kevin Magnussen behaviour

The Haas driver was further investigated by the stewards after the Sprint for alleged unsportsmanlike behaviour in Miami, but they took no further action as  a result.

Magnussen admitted after the Sprint that his penalties were likely deserved, with a total of 25 seconds having been added to his race time and a subsequent punishment being sent his way by the FIA of three penalty points on his Super Licence.

That punishment puts him to within four penalty points of a race ban, but McLaren team boss Stella believes deliberately driving in such a way to keep another car behind should result in an immediate ban.

“For me, it’s actually relatively simple, this case, because we have a case of a behaviour being intentional in terms of damaging another competitor,” Stella explained to media in Miami.

“This behaviour is perpetuated within the same race and repeated over the same season. How can penalties be cumulative? They should be exponential.

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“It’s not five plus five plus five equals 15. Five plus five plus five equals… maybe you need to spend a weekend at home with your family, reflect on your sportsmanship and then go back.

“And if we see that you’ve become loyal, fair, and sportsmanlike to your fellow competitors, then you can stay in this business. It’s completely unacceptable.”

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri added that Magnussen’s post-Sprint comments set a “very risky precedent”, considering the implications of drivers publicly accepting penalties in order to benefit their teams – with Nico Hulkenberg having been the beneficiary of his team-mate’s movements in Miami.

“Actually, I saw his comments after the race, saying that he deserved to have the all the penalties he got,” Piastri said of Magnussen.

“I think the fact that the driver getting the penalties is saying he deserves all the penalties, and that’s kind of the route they chose to go down… it doesn’t set a very good precedent for everyone.

“I think getting penalties and saying ‘Well, it was a bit 50/50’ or ‘I got hard done by’ is one thing, but getting that many penalties and saying ‘Yeah, I deserve them all’ – I feel like that’s pretty average. It’s just not on.

“It sets a very risky precedent that I think should probably be policed a bit harsher.”