F1's Kevin Magnussen has 1 podium, 10 years in the backfield and zero regrets (2024)

Standing on the podium at Albert Park in Australia, Kevin Magnussen thought he knew how his Formula One career was going to unfold.

At 21 years old, Magnussen had crossed the line third on debut. McLaren, after a rough 2013, appeared to have returned to the front of the pack in F1 with a new star on its hands.

“He looks like his mom sent him out to play for the afternoon, he’s so young,” said Sky Sports commentator Martin Brundle as Magnussen, baby-faced in an all-white race suit, hoisted his trophy into the air. “A brilliant drive.”

Magnussen believed he would be in contention for a championship. “That was my mindset,” the Dane, now bearded and tattooed, told The Athletic. “It’s crazy to think about now, because I’ve been nowhere near a championship fight ever since.”

Ten years on from that day in Melbourne, Magnussen hasn’t even been back on the F1 podium.

But with the hindsight of a decade where he’s made a name for bouncing back from setbacks — few drivers can say they’ve gotten into F1 three times — Magnussen, now in his seventh season with Haas, can recognize where his career changed course.

“I just wasn’t in the right place,” he said. “I had the talent and the skill. I had the speed. But I wasn’t in the right mindset.”

Magnussen wasn’t meant to start in F1 with McLaren. He had starred throughout his junior career and Martin Whitmarsh, the team principal at the time, had struck a deal for him to race for Force India (now Aston Martin) in order to gain experience. “It would have been easier for me to come in with a smaller team, with less expectations,” Magnussen said. “(Force India) would have been perfect for me.”

Things changed in the closing months of the 2013 season when, amid dissatisfaction over Sergio Pérez’s performance in his first season at the team, McLaren put Magnussen straight into one of its seats for 2014 alongside Jenson Button, the 2009 world champion. Its bet on youth had paid off handsomely in 2007 with Lewis Hamilton. Now, it wanted to do the same again.

2013 had been a miserable year for McLaren, its first without a podium since 1980. What seemed like a blip at the time was in fact the start of the end of the team’s status as an F1 powerhouse. “Back when I joined McLaren, it was very much like joining Mercedes now,” Magnussen said. “They’d had one year that was kind of not fantastic, but previous to that, they’d been a top team for ages. The decline was unthinkable. The expectation for me was they’d had a bad year, but they would for sure come back and be strong again.”

His debut confirmed that thinking. He qualified fourth in the rain and spent the race tailing Daniel Ricciardo for second place as Nico Rosberg disappeared at the front for Mercedes.

It meant that third at the flag and second in the final classification after Ricciardo was disqualified for a fuel flow breach didn’t much surprise Magnussen, even on his F1 debut. “I’d come from my junior career where every year was a championship-fighting year,” Magnussen said. “It seemed normal. It seemed like another year, just now it was F1.” With Button moving up to third, McLaren led the constructors’ standings thanks to a double podium finish. It would be the team’s last podium for more than five years.

The reality soon set in. Mercedes romped clear as the dominant team, boiling the title fight down to Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. As the battle to be next-best shook out, it was Williams and Red Bull who more often snared podiums. Magnussen and McLaren were nowhere to be seen. The car wasn’t quick enough to regularly contend at the front, leaving Magussen to fall short of his own lofty expectations and, trying to compensate, overdriving. The more experienced Button was able to stay relaxed, leading to greater consistency on the track and more than twice as many points through the season.

“It took too long for me to kind of adjust my expectations,” Magnussen said. “I continued to get really frustrated about not fighting for poles and wins. I was always panicking, not to be at the top. Because that had been my whole career.”

When Fernando Alonso’s sour Ferrari exit put a McLaren reunion on the cards for 2015, McLaren had to make a decision over the second seat: invest in Magnussen’s youth and potential, or stick with Button’s experience.

Magnussen wound up as the collateral damage in a McLaren boardroom battle. Ron Dennis, who had returned as CEO in early 2014, wanted to keep him, but was outvoted by the other owners. “I think part of the reason they overruled him was to piss him off,” Magnussen said. “That was my impression anyway. I got dealt bad cards.”

In nine months, Magnussen had gone from believing he’d fight for an F1 championship to panicking about his future not only professionally, but personally. “It was very tough, very frustrating,” he said. “I was just very worried. It’s not like I was financially secure.

“It was a s– situation.”

Bizarrely, Magnussen was back behind the wheel of a McLaren F1 car for the first race of 2015 in Australia. A concussion sustained by Alonso in a testing crash ruled him out of the first race, meaning Magnussen, now in a reserve role, got the call-up. But he didn’t even make the start of the race after the new Honda engine failed en route to the grid; a telling sign of the doomed partnership to follow.

“I knew it was going to be terrible,” Magnussen said. “We knew how much pace the car was lacking. I wasn’t that excited about it. It was nice to get back in the car, but I knew it was only going to be for one race. I’d still lost my seat. So it didn’t make a big difference.”

It was the start of a rough year for Magnussen who, at just 22 years old, was coming to terms with the end of his F1 dream. “Towards the end of the summer, I thought, ‘it’s over. I’m not coming back,’” he said. “Apart from Australia, I hadn’t driven a race car since Abu Dhabi. I wasn’t doing the simulator. I felt really strange.”

He started to explore options outside F1, testing Porsche’s Le Mans car in the November of that year, and was then offered a deal to join Mercedes in DTM, Europe’s top touring car series. Around this time, the F1 door started to reopen when Renault took over the debt-ridden Lotus operation and discussed a seat with Magnussen, who could only stall Mercedes for so long. “By the time we got to Christmas, (Mercedes) had to go with someone else,” Magnussen said. “So I was again going into another year with nothing. I took a big risk there.” One he felt compelled to take to keep his F1 dream alive.

Renault eventually confirmed Magnussen’s seat for 2016, only for him to again walk into a team in turmoil. He scored seven of its eight points through the year, and was disappointed not to get a proper show of commitment back, as Renault shopped around for drivers. Magnussen famously said that “at one point, the Pope had an offer” to race for the team for 2017. If he wanted the stability his F1 career had lacked, he had to go elsewhere.

Only one season old in 2017, Haas didn’t come with the inevitable baggage of racing for teams such as McLaren and Renault, making it a better fit for Magnussen. Away from the expectations and pressure of manufacturer teams, Magnussen felt closer to his racing roots. His first multi-year contract in F1 also provided the kind of security he’d not enjoyed before.

“This is where I feel like I’ve been able to develop as a driver properly, as a Formula One driver at least,” Magnussen said. “I appreciate that a lot about Haas.”

Alongside Romain Grosjean, Magnussen helped Haas finish fifth in the constructors’ championship in 2018 as they became points-regulars, but it was a status the team struggled to maintain. By the end of 2020, and with the reality of the Covid-19 pandemic biting its finances, Haas had to turn to youth — and money — for its drivers. For 2021, it replaced Magnussen and Grosjean with the all-rookie lineup Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin, the latter bringing Uralkali, a Russian company owned by Mazepin’s father and with links to the state, with him as a title sponsor.

Magnussen was at peace with the decision. He’d only just turned 28, but was ready to move on from F1. He became a front-runner in IMSA, America’s premier sportscar series, and fulfilled a lifelong dream of racing at the 24 Hours of Le Mans alongside his father, Jan.

Then, in February 2022, Guenther Steiner called. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the termination of Mazepin’s contract, Haas needed a driver and Magnussen was top of the list. “I said yes immediately,” Magnussen said. “I didn’t need to think about it. I said yes, and then I went home to my wife, and I thought oh s—, maybe I should talk to her as well! But she was on board with it, 100% as well.”

Magnussen looks back on 2022 as a “dream” for Haas. The team had a quick car in the early part of the season, allowing him to finish fifth on his return in Bahrain and score a shock pole when the rain arrived in Brazil at the end of the year. “We were just having fun,” he said. “I couldn’t believe my luck.”

The year away and significant personal change also adjusted his perspective of the sport. He’d moved back to Denmark, living in his homeland for the first time since he was a teenager, and started a family with his wife, Louise. “It was a turning point in my life, personally,” he said. “I was in a different place. F1 wasn’t so intimidating any more. I could just enjoy it.”

Fast forward to 2024, and Magnussen is back in a contract year. Off the back of a tough 2023, Haas made a big change at the top as Steiner was replaced as team principal by Ayao Komatsu. “I feel like it’s a different atmosphere again, and there’s reason to be excited and interested,” Magnussen said. “There’s opportunity here.”

Magnussen and teammate Nico Hülkenberg have largely outstripped the low expectations in the first two races, working together to help Hülkenberg score a point in Jeddah. Their relationship now is a far cry from how it was seven years ago, when Magnussen profanely told off Hülkenberg on live TV after the German was upset with his on-track moves in Hungary.

Hülkenberg said working with Magnussen since 2023 had been “positive and smooth with “no problems, friction or whatever” across the garage. “A lot of people were maybe not expecting that because of the story five years ago,” he said. “We’ve actually bonded really well and work well together.”

It has come with experience and maturity, something that also gives Magnussen a new perspective on 2014 and all that happened after that podium in Melbourne. He knows it was simply too much, too soon.

“I wasn’t strong enough, physically or mentally,” Magnussen said. “I think I got there… I don’t want to say too fast, but in a tricky position, with a big team with big expectations that was struggling. I felt like I didn’t have the support that I needed as a young guy struggling a bit.”

But he feels zero regret. “Who wouldn’t have taken the McLaren seat?” Magnussen said. “I was over the moon to race for McLaren instead of Force India. In hindsight, it would have been much better to race for Force India. It’s easy to say now, but there’s no way I could have said no back then.”

Zero regret, and zero frustration. As tough as it may have been for Magnussen at the time, and as different as the past decade has turned out compared to what he thought would happen while standing on the podium in Melbourne, he’s content. Whatever happens after this year, be it more years in F1 or a third departure from the grid, he will take it all in his stride.

“I’ve found out there’s other things in life other than Formula One,” Magnussen said. “I enjoy what I do, and I hope it will continue. But if it doesn’t, that’s life as well. Luckily I have a very privileged life outside of this, and I will be able to enjoy that even more.

“Because it does come at a cost, to be a Formula One driver. It’s certainly worth it, but it’s not for free. You only do it because you know the reward is very big on the good days, and you know it’s time limited.

“You’ve got to grab that opportunity when it’s there, because you’re not going to be here forever. There’s going to be a long life hopefully after.

“You have to just enjoy the ride.”

(Lead image of Kevin Magnussen: Clive Rose, Mark Thompson/Getty Images; Design: Ray Orr/The Athletic)