Juan Pablo Montoya has explained why Kevin Magnussen was the man Haas turned to when they needed to find a driver on the eve of the new Formula 1 season.
Haas found themselves a man short with just two weeks to go until lights out in Bahrain following the sacking of Nikita Mazepin. The American team ditched the driver after cutting ties with the Russian fertiliser firm Uralkali, co-owned by his oligarch father Dmitry, which had been a major sponsor.
Team boss Guenther Steiner later explained that keeping the Russian racer was untenable in the wake of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. "We couldn't make any other decision when we got to it, there was no possibility to keep him driving," he said in Bahrain. "The criticism, the sanction, altogether, it didn't work out any more."
