Kevin Magnussen’s return to Formula 1 surprised many fans and even some professionals. Before going into the details that led Haas to recall the Dane a year and a half after his departure from the team, there is one aspect that seems to be increasingly present in the decisions that are made by team managers.
It is the fear of making a mistake, or if we want the tendency not to take risks that leads to choosing known paths, with the lowest possible rate of unknowns. It is an attitude that is also confirmed by very long contracts (never seen before in Formula 1) with team-driver pairs that have been linked for decades, with no desire on either side to try something new.
The Haas was caught off guard by the Mazepin affair, an aspect that made the last fifteen days of the US team difficult, finding itself without warning without one of the two starting drivers (and without its main sponsor) a few weeks before the start of the world championship. .
Put under pressure by a countdown clock that marked the time left until the trip to Bahrain, Haas evaluated various options, from Pietro Fittipaldi to Antonio Giovinazzi, from Nico Hulkenberg to Oscar Piastri.
But in reality, the choice in Gene Haas’ head was immediately clear: Kevin Magnussen. The time elapsed from the Barcelona tests to yesterday’s announcement was necessary for the Dane to close the contracts with the Ganassi team (for the Imsa series) and with Peugeot for the Wec program.
What could have tipped the choice in the direction of Magnussen? A year without Formula 1 is not a dramatic break, but the team knows that Kevin will need some time to find the automatisms.
Kevin Magnussen and Gunther Steiner
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
The Dane missed the Barcelona tests and above all the simulator tests, an opportunity that has never been exploited like this winter by all the riders at the start of the world championship, without exception. Haas probably gave a lot of value to the knowledge of the team and of the working method of the technical group, an aspect that allows you not to have to take into account an integration phase that would have been necessary for a new driver.
In his four years spent in the team (from 2017 to 2020) Magnussen scored a total of 96 points (against Grosjean’s 75), capitalizing heavily in the 2018 season, the only one in which he overtook his teammate in the standings.
Let me be clear: Magnussen has the numbers to be in Formula 1, but the feeling of an ordinary driver remains in the background, who has had his good days alternating with moments of fogging, leaving (so far) the most significant sign of his career in racing. debut at the wheel of McLaren.
Mick Schumacher, Haas F1 Team, wearing the “No War” T-shirt
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Later came more or less good seasons, but without real highs. Now, at the age of twenty-nine, he is called to prove something more, given that his teammate will not be a driver of equal experience, but a boy in his second season in Formula 1, namely Mick Schumacher. Magnussen will have to wear the shoes of reference drivers and also find the right motivation, the one that at the end of 2020 seemed definitively lost.
“To be honest, the last two years have been quite complicated and I am a driver who likes to win – Kevin declared at the moment of his farewell to Formula 1 – I know that every driver is aiming for the highest finish, but I really, really want to win. and we weren’t even close to being in any kind of situation just to be able to win a race. “
“I’m not sad, I can’t wait to get back to racing in a winning program, to get to a race weekend and know that if everything goes well I will be able to aim for victory, and maybe even for the championship. I won’t miss Formula. 1, it was a childhood dream that came true and I feel privileged to have had this opportunity ”.
Destiny reserved for him the most unexpected of calls, and Kevin probably understood how much he missed Formula 1 by staying far away, since he did not hesitate to close two heavy contracts to return to where he left off just over a year ago.
The return of Magnussen definitively extinguished the dreams of four other riders who, each for different reasons, hoped to be at the start of the world championship. The choice on the card with the most unknowns, but at the same time fascinating, would have been that of Oscar Piastri, who will remain seated on the ‘bench’ of the Alpine.
Oscar Piastri, Alpine reserve rider
Photo by: Alpine
Potentially the reigning Formula 2 champion could have been what Leclerc was to Alfa Romeo in 2018, but it would have been a loan (from a competing team) and not an acquisition, and in a Formula 1 working in the in the long run, these operations now seem to have gone out of fashion.
For the Italian colors the most fascinating choice would obviously have been Giovinazzi’s. In 2021 Antonio confirmed good growth in Alfa Romeo, but his name has never been advocated in Haas, even in previous circumstances, and there are those who trace it all back to an accident in which Giovinazzi was the protagonist in the first laps of the session. FP1 in the 2017 Hungarian GP.
Antonio Giovinazzi, Dragon Penske Autosport
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
This time there seemed to be everything for an agreement, Antonio seemed for a few days the right man at the right time, but the marriage was once again confirmed as impossible. It cannot be ruled out that he may also have had his weight in the scenario of a potentially complex coexistence with Schumacher, given that both are linked to Ferrari, and obviously at the end of the season one of the two would have chewed bitter. Magnussen offered certainty and zero headaches, and in today’s Formula 1 this has become a great added value.
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