It’s been hard to find Kevin Magnussen without a big smile on his face since he made his sensational return to Formula One in March.
The story of his comeback has been well told now. He was preparing for a family holiday in Miami with wife Louise and baby daughter Laura, having given up any lingering hope of racing in F1 again, when old boss Guenther Steiner called him about replacing ousted Russian driver Nikita Mazepin at Haas for the new season.
Magnussen, 29, is back in Miami this week as a Formula One driver, having accepted Steiner’s offer, although not before convincing a sceptical Louise that it was the right thing to do. A big part of her concern came down to their new role as parents and whether F1’s gruelling 23-race schedule would fit into that.
Magnussen’s return has added to the small collection of fathers on the grid, with Sebastian Vettel and Sergio Perez alone in that category before. Ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix Magnussen and his wife created one of the feel-good moments in F1’s recent history when they proudly watched Laura playing in the cockpit of his Haas.
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The Magnussen of this stint — he raced for McLaren in 2014, and then Renault and Haas between 2016 and 2020 — is noticeably different to the one we saw previously. He’s still as talented, but he is calmer and more relaxed away from the race track. While he puts some of that down to gratitude at an opportunity he never thought he would get again, a lot of it comes to down to a shift in perspective.
“Becoming a dad suddenly changes you in the way that someone is now more important than you,” Magnussen told ESPN ahead of the Miami Grand Prix (May 8, 3.25PM ET ABC, Full Schedule). “When you’re a Formula One driver, and I guess any top sports person, you grew up in this world where everything is centred around you.
“The focus is just on you all the time, just yourself, no-one else. Suddenly, becoming a dad there’s this other person that is just more important.”
He laughs, adding:…
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