Haas announced this week that Kevin Magnussen, who has raced for the team in all but two of their seasons so far, will not return for the 2025 season.
It wasn’t a major surprise. After all, Magnussen himself has said in recent weeks he was planning on returning to endurance racing if Formula 1 wasn’t in the cards.
Maybe the most interesting aspect of Magnussen’s F1 career is how he started it. He joined McLaren jumping straight from Formula Renault 3.5 in 2014, at a time in which McLaren was still considered a somewhat serious team before the full collapse.
He finished second in race one and legitimately thought he would challenge for the championship in his very first season. Instead, not only did he finish 11th in points that year, he has never been able to return to the podium again.
Magnussen’s current teammate, Nico Hulkenberg, holds the record for most consecutive races without a podium, having never scored one in 218. Magnussen ranks second with 175 races since scoring that first podium in his first race.
The first time Magnussen joined Haas was in 2017, their second season. He left after 2020, before re-joining as a surprise in 2022 as Nikita Mazepin was dropped due to the war in Ukraine.
129 of Haas’ 276 points over the years have been scored by Magnussen, who also scored the team’s lone pole at Brazil 2022. Moving away from their all-time leading points scorer is continued evidence that Haas has entered a new era with new team principal Ayao Komatsu.
Who will join the team’s previously announced driver for 2025, Oliver Bearman? All reports seem to indicate Esteban Ocon has already signed on the dotted line.
I don’t like the idea of Ocon joining this team. Ocon is a guy who a team should get if they are looking for somebody to challenge their other driver. If Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Carlos…
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