A welder or the new Hamilton? Kevin Magnussen’s parallel universes

Life is a weird thing. You set goals. You work. You plan. But something completely random can change its course so dramatically that you just know: if that something hadn’t happened, it would all be different. An airline algorithm could put you in the seat next to your future business partner. You could step on someone’s shoe in a bar, strike up a friendship and – bam – before you know it, you’re working as a lifeguard in Australia.

Or a Danish millionaire could like your handshake and – bam – five years later, you’re an F1 driver.

You’d think Kevin Magnussen’s path was set. There was no way the son of Denmark’s biggest motorsport star could escape being a racer, right? But when he switched from go-karts to cars, his father Jan ran out of money to finance his career – and it was rescued by a fellow called Karsten Ree, one of Denmark’s richest men, who happened to sponsor Magnussen Sr.’s team in the country’s touring car championship.

“I know for a fact that I gave him a good handshake when I met him,” laughs Kevin as we sit down with him outside the Haas hospitality area ahead of his final race in F1 to look back on his career. “I shook his hand, looked him in the eye and apparently presented myself in a good way! He told my dad about it later. You know, ‘This kid’s got something’. And he was like, ‘Ah! I want to support him’.

“In terms of results, there wasn’t much merit. I’d done well in karting, I’d won the Danish Formula Ford. But you know, it wasn’t enough for him to go in and put all the money in. And I thought I’m glad I gave him that good a handshake!

“Then another investor came in – and that was in the British Formula 3 season. The first couple of races didn’t go so well, but he had made this big commitment and he wanted to see results. So he called me into his office and said, ‘Look, I need to see something’. And I just got – I don’t know – really annoyed.

“I said ‘OK, you know what, come to the next race and I’ll win two races’. So cocky! And when I left I was like, ‘Shit! Fuck, man. What did I just say to that guy…’ – because of course he said, ‘Yeah, good, I’ll come. I’ll go see it.’

Magnussen finished second to Carlin team-mate Felipe Nasr during the 2011 British F3 championship, his season coming alive with two wins at Snetterton

Photo by: Motorsport Images

“And he went there. And I won two races! And, you know, had I not won those two races, I have a feeling he might not have been so enthusiastic about this project!”

There is a parallel universe in which Kevin Magnussen, the son of a former McLaren and Stewart F1 driver, is a welder in the small town of Roskilde. When his dad could no longer afford to pay for Kev’s racing, his uncle got him a job at a local factory “because you never know how this motorsport thing is going to turn out” – and he spent three months there welding things together.

“The thing is, it’s not even a parallel universe,” he grins. “It’s this universe. You know, I was in a workshop with tools in my hand, working as a welder. I had that. Not for very long, thank God, but that reality is not very far from me. And it’s kind of, in a way, part of my identity.

“I came into F1 with a team that, at the time, you’d think I was just copying Lewis. Even after the first race of the season I thought, ‘Yeah, I’m following Lewis here'”
Kevin Magnussen

“A big part of me feels out of place here. I’m a Formula 1 driver? A lot of people know who I am? It still feels… not real.”

He’s done well. Ten years in the sport, 185 races, more than 200 points, a pole and a podium. It is a career that many would be jealous of. But is there anything that could dramatically change its course and make the statistics look more impressive?

Take Lewis Hamilton, for example. It doesn’t take much imagination to see him as an eight-time world champion – that’s easy. But what if, in the closing laps of the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix, the rain had slowed just enough for Timo Glock to find enough grip to accelerate out of the final corner of the championship? Had Hamilton not won his first title then, would he have moved to Mercedes? There is arguably a parallel universe where Lewis isn’t a champion at all. But is there one where Kevin Magnussen is?

“Well, you know, I came into F1 with a team that, at the time, you’d think I was just copying Lewis,” he says. “Even after the first race of the season I thought, ‘Yeah, I’m following Lewis here’. When I left Australia, I looked at the drivers’ standings on the plane, just for fun. Obviously it was just one race. But I was P2 in the championship and I thought, ‘OK, the fight is on, in the first year’. I really thought that.

Magnussen finished second on his maiden F1 start for McLaren in the 2014 Australian GP, but it remains his only podium

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

“But it turned out to be an outlier race in terms of performance, and the rest of the season, and the many, many years after that… it took McLaren ten years to get back to the form they had in 2012. And I hit it right at the beginning of that downward trend. And if I had come two or three years earlier, it would have been a different story.

“I think I was also unlucky to lose my seat at the end of that year. You know, I had been quicker than Jenson [Button], on pace. He’d outscored me by far in the races. But it was quite clear what I had to change.

“I just had to finish the races, you know, just calm down a bit. It was not like I needed to do things better. I needed to hold back a little – and then I think it would have been a completely different performance in terms of consistency and so on.

“I think I was unlucky to lose that seat that year, and that kind of changed my trajectory and my career loop.”

After the McLaren board decided Button would be the one to partner Fernando Alonso into a new and – as it looked at the time – exciting era with Honda, Magnussen was sent to sit on a substitute bench. He moved back to Denmark and spent a year travelling to races with McLaren as a reserve driver, all while battling depression and desperately wanting to come back. He eventually did with Renault – but the momentum was lost.

“I still believed in it,” he says, when asked if the thought of winning the world championship had gone out of his head by then. “What I wanted to do was show that I was good enough to go with a big team. And I think Haas was a great place to do that.

“I ended up coming back to F1 with Renault, but only for one year [in 2016] – and that was toxic. I could have continued. Even though they denied offering me a contract – I can show you the contract they offered me. But the whole thing was toxic there, so I was glad to get the chance to go to Haas and find that stability and that support.

“It was my third year in F1. I was 24 or something… 23? You know, anything was still possible. I still believed it was possible. And there were moments when I felt it was going in that direction.

His 2016 season with Renault is one Magnussen describes today as toxic, before his move to Haas for 2017

Photo by: Mark Sutton

“In 2018, we had a really good car in the first half of the year. Charles [Leclerc] had just arrived in F1 with Sauber. And the start of his first season wasn’t great. And mine was really good! And then suddenly Ferrari was reaching out.

“Suddenly I was driving in their simulator, not for Haas, but for Ferrari. They were sniffing around. And I thought, okay… I was already getting excited about where this was going. But then Charles started to really kill it! And I heard nothing.

“I don’t know how close it got. But I think if Charles had not started to perform, if he had had a shitty season all year long, I think I would have been one of the drivers they would have looked at. Sometimes you feel like you are getting close, but still not that close. That’s the way it goes.

“Christian [Horner] said, ‘Look, there’s nothing at Red Bull, but we can talk about Toro Rosso’. And I said, ‘No, no, let’s not do that,’ which I probably should have done”
Kevin Magnussen

“And after that season, Daniel [Ricciardo] left Red Bull, and I remember my management speaking to Christian Horner, because of course everyone was talking about the Red Bull seat. And Christian said, ‘Look, there’s nothing at Red Bull, but we can talk about Toro Rosso’. And I said, ‘No, no, let’s not do that,’ which I probably should have done.

“It was Gasly who took that [Red Bull] seat. [Alex] Albon was promoted from F2 to Toro Rosso, and then Gasly didn’t do a good job – and Albon came in! So, you know, the guy who got that Toro Rosso seat ended up at Red Bull.”

It would have been too easy – not to say unfair – to put it all down to luck and chance. You still have to set goals, plan and work hard. Does he feel he’s worked as hard as he should have? And does he believe he had the talent to become a world champion?

“I could have done more, for sure,” he admits. “You know, I don’t think anyone can say ‘I couldn’t have done more’. I think there will always be things… There were times when I didn’t work hard enough. But then there were times when I worked my butt off. I don’t really have any regrets. I don’t think there’s anything I could have done to change the course of my career. I really doubt that.

Magnussen says he has no regrets as he prepares to depart F1 for a new chapter with BMW in sportscars

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“And what is enough talent? I would have loved to have had more – because it would have made things easier! But I think I had a pretty good amount of talent. If anything, I would have liked to have been more interested in the technology here.

“That part doesn’t really interest me. I want to just drive. And I think all these systems and all this mapping stuff and all this theoretical set-up stuff faults me a little bit. I’m not a car guy!

“Most of the time at home I drive my wife’s Volvo because it’s more comfortable than my own car. I appreciate just driving and competing. But if I had a bigger natural interest in the technology side, it would have probably benefited me.”

Perhaps he could have done better with the media. You’d probably blame him for having one of the lowest number of Instagram followers on the grid, despite spending nine full years racing in F1. You’d probably argue that he could at least try to work on his image. But while other drivers use almost every arrival in the paddock as a red-carpet opportunity, Kev always walks through the gates wearing jeans, sneakers and a team T-shirt.

“That’s a part of F1 that I don’t really identify with,” says Magnussen. “Like… being the influencer is something I don’t relate to. Not at all.

“I’m a driver. I drive the car. I would feel very out of place walking in with a Prada, you know, whatever – all these fashion brands… If they’d paid me a lot of money, okay, maybe I’d wear it! But I would still feel very strange.

“I mean, there’s a commercial side to F1 that I’ve learned to navigate. Obviously, there’s a lot of money in sponsorship and commercial deals. But what I’ve sort of found out is that these high-end fashion brands don’t want to pay anyway because they’re so big. So you better go with an IT company.

“What’s it all for? Building a big brand, becoming a fashion icon and all that… I think some people are just pleasing their egos. If you think about it… we’re just racing cars, you know? The really important things in life are not happening here.

Magnussen hasn’t bought into some of the branding elements that have crept into F1

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“But I think it’s something that’s built into us from a young age, in all these drivers, that this is who we are. It’s our identity. It pleases our egos – to be fast. We feel good when we’re quick, quicker than other guys.

“It’s a weird thing, right, if you think about it! Being faster than someone else, making him feel shit… That is a f***ing good feeling! And I don’t know what it is. It’s a weird thing. But if you think about what we actually do here, it becomes a bit trivial.”

But F1, with all its pretentious grandiosity and over-inflated egos, has given Kevin Magnussen everything he has now.

“I can spend all the time I want with my kids. And we still have food on the table. You know, that’s the most important thing I take away from this career”
Kevin Magnussen

“It has given me the opportunity to live a privileged life,” he says. “First and foremost, I look at it from the perspective that I’m a dad now. I provide for my family and I can do that by driving a car and still enjoy life.

“That is a huge privilege that not many people have. I can spend all the time I want with my kids. And we still have food on the table. You know, that’s the most important thing I take away from this career. That’s what I’m most grateful for.”

Life is a truly strange thing. You can lose your dream job, get depressed, burn through all your cash, move back to your hometown of 50,000 with your tail between your legs – and meet the love of your life and the future mother of your children.

“She was working as a waitress in a restaurant and I just started flirting with her in the restaurant,” Kevin tells of how he met Louise. “I had just lost my seat at McLaren and we met at a time when I was quite depressed. She was studying – she’s a teacher and she was studying for that – and I was living in her little apartment. Basically she looked after me, not the other way around.

Magnussen credits his wife Louise with helping to keep his racing career going

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“I ran out of money completely. I paid a big part of what I earned to my investor. And I was young and dumb, so I spent the rest. I spent every penny I earned that year. So a few months into the following year, I simply ran out of money.

“I had no income. The bank had blocked all my credit cards. So when I got an offer from Toto [Wolff] to do a DTM shootout test with Mercedes, I couldn’t even buy an EasyJet ticket. She paid for it. And I borrowed her credit card to go to that test and buy food and petrol for the rental car. She’s really been amazing.”

He’s not ending his F1 career with a world championship. He hasn’t even won a race. And his only podium is still the one he got in Australia in 2014. But he’ll tell you that he’s got something bigger out of his time in F1.

“It’s something that’s only came in the last couple of years,” says Magnussen, who will race in the World Endurance Championship next year as a BMW factory driver. “Whereas in the past, I think I was very desperate just to be in F1 and to achieve my goals in F1. I thought… I really thought that happiness in life depended on that, you know? And it’s been a great relief to come out of that bubble and realise that it doesn’t depend on that at all. You know, it’s a nice thing to have, but it’s not a must.

“I mean, I look at it from two angles. In a way, I didn’t achieve my goal. And I’m actually, you know… it’s annoying! It’s kind of annoying. And it will always be annoying!

“But it’s fine, you know. I look at what I got out of it and it’s really hard to feel any sort of bad emotions. When I look back on it from that angle, it’s like… ‘Hell, yes!’”