It’s great to see a driver lineup that is even in performance and that’s one of the reason that the Haas driver lineup is very nice. While there is one driver that has a clear edge over the other, neither one is massively outpacing the other. Let’s look at a statistical overview of the Haas 2017 driver lineup.
Kevin Magnussen joined the Haas F1 Team alongside experienced French driver Romain Grosjean. He had a spectacular rookie year with McLaren in 2014 and showed a lot of potential, so much so that I called for Danish sponsors to back his return to Formula One after being dumped from McLaren. Unfortunately, his performance since his return has not been anything too special, but good nonetheless.
However, Grosjean shows a clear advantage in pure driving pace. Grosjean has out qualified the Dane 12 of the 20 races this season. But looking at performance over a race shows another story. Neither driver massively outperformed the other, despite Grosjean having collected more points, largely because the team was hovering around the final points position.
Looking at the races that each driver finished, they both had a similar average finishing position just outside of the points. Grosjean was a little more fortunate with completing the race distance, suffering two less retirements.
Grosjean is clearly the number one driver, but Magnussen isn’t lagging behind a whole lot.
