How Magnussen finally gets to fulfil his destiny

Was Kevin Magnussen going to end up in sportscar racing after the end of his time in Formula 1? Of course he was. It’s in his blood after watching and listening to tales of his father Jan’s exploits over a 20-plus-year career that included four class victories at the Le Mans 24 Hours.

It explains why he’s now part of BMW’s Hypercar roster with WRT in the World Endurance Championship and was out racing one of the M Hybrid V8 LMDhs at the Daytona 24 Hours, just six weeks after he drew the curtain once and for all on F1 after nine seasons and 185 grand prix starts. 

“I always knew that I’d come and do this,” smiles Magnussen. “I grew up with it and had a passion for it. I always wanted to be part of it. As a young boy you look up to your dad and want to do what he’s been doing.”

It would be wrong to say that Magnussen grew up in the paddock watching his father race Panoz prototypes and Chevrolet Corvette GT cars. “I was very busy myself,” he points out.

“I started karting aged two and was eight when I started participating in official races.” But before that he was taking part in what he calls “unofficial races” organised by his family.

But he does have vivid memories from his time in the sportscar paddock as a kid. The first is from the Nurburgring in 2000, the second of two European races on the American Le Mans Series schedule either side of Le Mans. It was a good day for the family: his father and David Brabham triumphed in wet conditions aboard their LMP-1 Roadster S.

Magnussen is relishing “real racing” with BMW in the World Endurance Championship

Photo by: JEP/Getty Images

The first Le Mans he remembers is 2003 when Jan raced Team Goh’s Audi R8, which wasn’t quite such a success, with fourth place together with Seiji Ara and Marco Werner. 

Yet for all the family history there is a difference between father and son, one that Magnussen Sr expounded to this author a dozen or so years ago. “I wanted to be a racing driver; Kevin wants to be an F1 driver,” he told me when his first-born was dominating Formula Renault 3.5 with DAMS in 2013.

It probably goes a long way to explaining some of the twists and turns in Kevin’s career, his stop-start journey to becoming a permanent fixture in the sportscar paddock. More than four years ago, at the end of 2020, he signed with Peugeot as it geared up for entry into the WEC in 2022.

“My hunger for the more pure side of racing kept growing. I’m very thankful that I got a career in F1, but it’s a tough lifestyle” Kevin Magnussen

Shortly after that he agreed to drive for Chip Ganassi Racing, then recently installed as Cadillac’s factory team in the IMSA SportsCar Championship, in a full programme of North American events in 2021 aboard its DPi-V.R Daytona Prototype international. 

For 2022 he was scheduled to contest the IMSA enduros with Ganassi and however many WEC races Peugeot ended up doing with its new 9X8 Hypercar. He was over F1, he told the world on his first public engagement in Peugeot kit in February.

Within weeks he was back with Haas after Nikita Mazepin was dropped following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He insists he wasn’t telling a lie: it was how he felt at that time.

Father and son in Jan’s Corvette days back in 2007

Photo by: Richard Dole/Getty Images

“I actually thought I was done with it, thought it was over,” he says of F1. And when he heard there might be a seat available back at Haas he “didn’t even consider myself for that”. But then there was a call from team principal Guenther Steiner. 

“He was telling me about the car and the progress they’d made,” recalls Magnussen. “He was selling it big time. So I thought OK. Apparently I wasn’t fully done with F1 at that time.”

Yet that wasn’t the first time Magnussen had signed a contract to race a sportscar. Late in 2015 he had a test aboard Porsche’s 919 Hybrid LMP1 at Barcelona and was recruited to drive its third entry at Le Mans for the following year: Porsche was looking to repeat the trick that had paid dividends in 2015 when it won the French enduro with Nico Hulkenberg, Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber.

Magnussen was out of F1 at the time. He’d lost his race seat at McLaren after his maiden season of grand prix racing in 2014 and spent a year as its test and reserve driver. But there was nothing on the horizon for 2016.

That explains why he put pen to paper with Porsche on a deal, one that fell over in December when, together with sister marque Audi, it scratched its additional entry for the 24 Hours in a cost-cutting move that followed on from the diesel scandal. It was only after Christmas that the opportunity at Renault came up after the French car maker retook ownership of ‘Team Enstone’ from Lotus. 

The itch to go sportscar racing was definitely there. Magnussen explains that it grew through his time in F1. “My hunger for the more pure side of racing kept growing,” he reflects. “I’m very thankful that I got a career in F1, but it’s a tough lifestyle.

Magnussen was fifth with Haas at the 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix

Photo by: Andy Hone/Getty Images

“You are away basically the whole year, but a very big part of your year away from your family isn’t spent racing. There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t racing.”

Now he is sure that the “F1 chapter is closed for me” and is excited about a move into something he likes to call “real racing”. Echoing his father’s comments all those years ago, he says: “There are F1 drivers and there are racing drivers.”

He may have stepped down from the highest echelon of the sport, but Magnussen is adamant that he’s not moving into a less challenging form of racing. “F1 is the biggest, most hyped and most prestigious category of racing, but it is by no means harder than this,” he declares.

“I did 10 years of F1 and never had the chance of winning. You go to the races not even thinking about winning; you go hoping to get points, dreaming of a top five or something” Kevin Magnussen

“This is as hard, if not harder because the margins are so close. You need a very broad spectrum of skills and it requires a different mindset, one that makes it more challenging actually. In F1 and single-seaters you are alone in the car and have the whole team around you.” It is refreshing, he adds, “not to be part of a one-man show”.

When it became clear that F1 was finally over for him, BMW was his first port of call. A “big factor” in that was WRT team boss Vincent Vosse, whom he has known since he was a toddler.

Magnussen Sr and Vosse were team-mates at Foundation Racing in British Formula Ford 1600 in 1992, the year of Kevin’s birth. Team-mates and also housemates: they lived together in a house in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire owned by team boss Mick Goldney.  

Sharing with his dad in LMP2 (#49) at Le Mans in 2021

Photo by: Motorsport Images

“We’ve always stayed in touch and I’ve seen his success in sportscars,” says Magnussen. “Everything he’s done gave me a good feeling.” As did what he calls the “good progress shown by BMW” at the end of last year as it moved up the Hypercar pecking order to become a genuine frontrunner. Witness its second-place finish at Fuji last year. 

Magnussen is partnered with Dries Vanthoor and Raffaele Marciello in the WEC and, following on from his debut with BMW at Daytona with the Rahal team, he also contested the Sebring 12 Hours and will also compete at the Petit Le Mans season finale at Road Atlanta in October alongside Vanthoor and Philipp Eng.

The chance to race in IMSA was important given his family history: “Many of those race tracks are almost mythical to me.”

The restart of Magnussen’s sportscar career might have yielded a victory at the first time of asking at Daytona. But for a broken nose mounting, he, Vanthoor, Eng and Marciello probably would have won.  

“We had the fastest car – we should have won,” he says. Winning races is something he’s looking forward to doing again: a solo victory at Detroit during his 2021 IMSA campaign alongside Renger van der Zande stands as his only race victory since his championship year in FR3.5.

“That’s what it is all about at the end of the day,” he reckons. “I did 10 years of F1 and never had the chance of winning. You go to the races not even thinking about winning; you go hoping to get points, dreaming of a top five or something.

Magnussen’s last win: Detroit IMSA 2021, with van der Zande (left)

Photo by: Michael L Levitt/Getty Images

“At the beginning you accept it because it’s F1 and you are on that stage. After some time, it wears you down – it becomes a little bit hopeless. Every time we talk about goals and strategy [at BMW], and I see that we are fighting for wins, it reminds me how much I’ve missed that.”

Magnussen, the sportscar driver, has some boxes he wants to tick and will no doubt get the chance at BMW in GT machinery. Racing on the Nurburgring Nordschleife, at Bathurst and Macau (where he competed in F3) are all on his bucket list.

And he’s already put a line through one: racing at Le Mans with his father. “It was something we had been talking about for a long time,” he says of their appearance together at the wheel of an LMP2 ORECA in 2021. 

But what Magnussen really wants to do is take the big prizes at the highest levels of sportscar racing. He talks about winning the WEC title and Daytona – they’re vying for second place on his ambition list. But he makes no secret of goal number one. 

“It has to be Le Mans,” he says. “That’s the big one.”

One of the ‘majors’ – victory at Daytona – escaped Magnussen’s grasp

Photo by: James Gilbert/Getty Images