Since Nico Hülkenberg became his teammate at Haas, Kevin Magnussen has been playing second fiddle in the US team. The Dane has only one point to his name this season, while Hülkenberg has collected six. He is well behind in the qualifying duel with a score of 2:6. So is it time for him to start worrying about his Formula 1 future?
“I want to be here next year and you always have that extra pressure. Because you know that in Formula 1 it only takes a few bad races to diminish your value,” said Magnussen. “You are only as good as your last race,” he stressed before the Monaco GP and added: “So it is very important to deliver and perform during this time.”
Is Kevin Magnussen in danger of leaving Formula 1? Don’t stress
At this stage of the season, the F1 driver market is working at full speed behind the scenes as one driver after another secures their futures, so there is hardly a better time to get good results – good results of which Magnussen has had very few so far.
However, the F1 veteran is sure that his racing team will not only make decisions based on the bare numbers, but will also take the circumstances into account: “I think the team can see through some of the bad luck I’ve had this year. So I’m not stressing too much about these things.”
Magnussen: We are so unlucky!
Magnussen is referring to these unfortunate situations, among other things, as being due to traffic in qualifying. He cited qualifying in Imola as an example. Oscar Piastri got in his way there, which was largely responsible for his Q1 exit. “We have to come to the conclusion that we have often done our best this year, but things just haven’t gone our way,” he is convinced.
“It feels like a poor excuse now, so we don’t always want to say: ‘We were so unlucky.’ But this year we’re struggling a lot with safety cars that came out at the wrong time for our strategy, and with traffic in qualifying and things like that,” the former McLaren and Renault driver is convinced.
In his opinion, this is what makes the 2024 Formula 1 season so different from last year: “I feel like the pace is there, whereas last year things were going better but I just couldn’t get the lap time out of the car in qualifying. This year it feels different.”
However, the 31-year-old cannot attribute his results this year solely to bad luck and unfortunate circumstances. The Haas driver, known as an aggressive driver, once again lived up to his reputation. In China and Miami, he knocked out a competitor and was penalized.
He was also at least partially to blame for the crash at the start with Sergio Perez at the Monaco GP. But he was not penalized there. In addition, he received a series of penalties in Saudi Arabia and Miami when he tried to defend his position tooth and nail. He has ten penalty points and is only two points away from a race ban.
The Formula 1 driver market is coming to a head: Haas with several options
The fact that his current teammate Nico Hülkenberg is moving to Audi-Sauber in 2025 plays into Magnussen’s prospects of a contract extension. Staying at However, Haas is far from being a sure bet. His contract with the Kannapolis team expires at the end of the year.
Ferrari junior Oliver Bearman, who will compete in six training sessions in Formula 1 in 2024, is considered the favorite for a cockpit. In addition to Magnussen, there are a number of applicants for the second seat, as team boss Ayao Komatsu confirmed: “Some current Formula 1 drivers are interested in our team.”
These drivers include, for example, the two Sauber drivers Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu. Both are at risk of being eliminated in Hinwil, so at least one of them will definitely have to look for a new job. The two Alpine drivers may also have already looked at Haas due to the misery of their current team.