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 Sainz both do not land at Mercedes, he’d be a decent opponent for George Russell.
Having him at Haas would be throwing Bearman into the deep end of the pool and watching if he will sink or swim. If Ferrari really is looking at Bearman as the future and somebody who could replace Lewis Hamilton in a few years’ time, this is the quickest way to determine this. But it might not be the right way.
There’s still a lot of discussion on where Carlos Sainz will go, with Alpine reportedly making the Spaniard a deal that made him think twice. With how much chatter there has been recently online of Mick Schumacher, it wouldn’t surprise me if he does end up finding a way back into an F1 seat.
Audi could well decide to go with Valtteri Bottas after all. But that lineup he’d make with Hulkenberg seems just far too unexciting. Getting one of the two is smart as a reliable points scoring veteran. Get both, however, and it becomes a game to see which retires first and allows a young rookie to get a shot.
Schumacher would not be a rookie, but he would be a fresh face. His name alone would score the German automaker some goodwill in their home country and with old school F1 fans who have seen manufacturers come-and-go all the time.
Schumacher is also not the same driver he was in 2022, when he was not renewed at Haas due to the amount of crashing he had done. He’s consistently fast in WEC and has proven a very credible driver in Alpine’s efforts there. He’s also tested for Mercedes, Alpine, and McLaren this summer for their F1 programs, giving him ample seat team in a variety of cars.
Audi wouldn’t also be the only route for Schumacher to go through. He’s definitely in the running for the Alpine seat, and if Williams loses out on Sainz and Bottas, Schumacher is very much an option as a Mercedes affiliated driver.
A curious bit of news that has come out recently is that Aston Martin did apparently look at the driver market before choosing to retain Lance Stroll. Either this is a lie or Aston Martin has the worst driver scouts in the history of racing.
It especially doesn’t make sense with Sainz still unsigned for next year. It’s not that Stroll has no value as a driver, it’s just that there are so many better options at this level right now.
It’s the reason why Magnussen is leaving F1 next season. There are only 20 seats in this series, and with drivers like Hamilton and Fernando Alonso breaking longevity records every year, it’s hard to justify a driver like Stroll remaining on the grid like he has. Unless of course their father bought a team for them. Like Stroll’s has.
About the author
Michael has watched NASCAR for 20 years and regularly covered the sport from 2013-2021, and also formerly covered the SRX series from 2021-2023. He now covers the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and road course events in the NASCAR Cup Series.
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