Kevin
Magnussen

Kevin Magnussen was born in Roskilde on 5 October 1992. His father, Jan Magnussen, was also a Formula One driver. After karting, he moved into single-seaters in 2008 and won the Danish Formula Ford championship. In 2009 he was runner-up in the Formula Renault 2.0 NEC behind António Félix da Costa, and in 2010 he finished third in German Formula 3 and took the rookie title. In 2011 he took seven wins with Carlin in British Formula 3 and ended up second to his team-mate Felipe Nasr. He placed seventh in Formula Renault 3.5 in 2012, then won the title in 2013 with DAMS, with five victories and eight pole positions. From 2010 to 2013 he was part of the McLaren Young Driver Programme.

Magnussen made his Formula One debut with McLaren in 2014. At the opening race in Australia he started fourth and crossed the line third. After Daniel Ricciardo was disqualified for a fuel infringement, he was promoted to second, which made him the first Dane to finish on a Formula One podium. He ended the season eleventh in the championship. Fernando Alonso joined the team for 2015, and Magnussen stayed on as test and reserve driver. He stood in for Alonso at the season opener in Australia, but an engine failure on the formation lap meant he never started the race. McLaren parted ways with him at the end of 2015. In 2016 he drove for Renault, finished seventh in Russia, the team's best result that year, and ended the season sixteenth in the standings.

From 2017 to 2020 he raced for Haas. He finished fourteenth in 2017, with seventh in Azerbaijan his best result. In 2018 he took ninth in the championship, the best of his career, with fifth places in Bahrain and Austria. He was sixteenth in 2019 and twentieth in 2020, when tenth place in Hungary brought his first point of the year. He left the team at the end of 2020. In 2021 he raced for Cadillac in the IMSA series and won the race in Detroit. He also contested the 24 Hours of Le Mans with High Class Racing alongside his father, and entered one IndyCar race for Arrow McLaren at Road America.

In 2022 he returned to Haas, replacing Nikita Mazepin. He finished fifth on his comeback in Bahrain, and in São Paulo he took the team's first pole position, after a red flag in qualifying left the track conditions worse. He ended that year thirteenth in the championship, then nineteenth in 2023 and fifteenth in 2024. After an accumulation of penalty points at the 2024 Italian Grand Prix he was banned for one race, and Oliver Bearman took his place in Azerbaijan. He still managed seventh in Mexico City. He had announced before the Hungarian Grand Prix that he would leave at the end of the season. In total he made 185 starts, with one podium and one pole position but no wins. No driver has started more races without leading a lap. In 2025 he became a BMW factory driver in the World Endurance Championship, and in 2026 he made his NASCAR Cup Series debut in a Chevrolet for Trackhouse Racing.

Source: Wikipedia, “Kevin Magnussen”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.