Haas team boss Guenther Steiner admits feeling the relationship between Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean was untenable following the British Grand Prix.
The two drivers came to blows on several occasions during the 2019 season, but it was at Silverstone when the biggest incident came as a small touch took both cars out on Lap 1.
Following that race, there were even rumours of Haas considering dropping Grosjean at Hockenheim and Steiner did fear their line-up was no longer sustainable.
“Absolutely, yeah. After Silverstone I was to a point where I could not see this working anymore because we were struggling with the car, then we were struggling with the drivers,” he told Motorsport.
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“It was just a struggle, and I’m not really moaning because I am under pressure at all times but it’s also for the team, to motivate the team.
“If I cannot control the drivers, how can that be good for the team? I put a lot of pressure under them to work, to do everything good and then they get together at Turn 5. At a certain stage, I thought it is not manageable anymore.”
The Italian also put the incident a little down to desperation from both drivers with that weekend proving a rare opportunity to compete strongly in the midfield amid a tough season.
“They didn’t think about the team anymore at a certain point, they just saw the opportunity to do good like in Barcelona and Silverstone, they qualified good and had the opportunity to get points and forgot those points are for the team and not only for them,” Steiner believes.
“They threw that one overboard, but was it because they were under too much pressure? I’ll find out maybe never. It could be as well just the pressure mounted dramatically for the team.”
Ultimately, Magnussen and Grosjean not only saw out the season but were retained for 2020 and the Dane described reports of disharmony at the time as more disruptive than the on-track incidents.
“It was annoying, because it became such a big subject, especially in the press around the time,” he explained. “That created like a sense of emergency kind of thing but it wasn’t really an issue – like me and Romain had no issues.
“We were on the phone to each other the week after Silverstone. There was absolutely no bad thing [between us].
“Of course the team feels that we let them down but there really was no intention. So I think all of that stuff has made us closer and closer because of all that and the whole experience of this year, this made us closer as a team.
“The good thing about Gunther especially is that what you see is what you get.”