Kevin Magnussen’s Future Not In The Dark Despite Enduring A Tough 2023 Season!

Kevin Magnussen, in all fairness, is an extremely competent driver whose on track or on field performances do not necessarily reflect the wide gamut of talent he possesses. He scored a podium, lest it is remembered, in the first year at McLaren (back then he was a young lad and new to F1), put a not so ecstatic Haas machine on pole position and that too in 2022, a year most famously remembered for the blazing speed of the Red Bulls and the Ferraris.

More than that, his racing prowess has put Denmark on the global map of F1 and with several years of racing under his belt, he’s now focused on putting Haas to a pedestal of respect and competitiveness. Yet, not all’s been going all too well or smoothly, as some would put it for the man sporting the unmistakably famous golden beard.

This year, and it’s rather shocking, Kevin Magnussen has been able to score no more than 2 points and more than half of the scheduled part of the season has been rendered complete.

Another racing event in the long litany of woes for Magnussen where he found competing with the rest on the grid an arduous exercise was the recently completed Zandvoort-bound Dutch Grand Prix. It was a race where backmarkers like Haas had little business to do where it came to point scoring as the likes of Red Bull and Aston Martin were completely in the driver’s seat.

Verstappen, as expected, won in the end while Fernando Alonso returned to the podium. A 12th and 16th by Haas drivers Hulkenberg and Magnussen (in that order) became, once again, another disappointing result for the struggling team.

But despite the no- show in 2023, which has been the clear result from the end of Kevin Magnussen, somewhere it is all too apparent that his future isn’t really in the dark and he needn’t worry all too much about what might happen ahead.

So why is that?

“I think we have the best drivers we can get at the moment,” answered Haas boss Gunther Steiner said at Zandvoort, “when you consider our finances and how attractive our car is. So I never talked to anyone.”

Given Haas, who are confident about the talent they currently have on their hands haven’t really reached out to others, the efforts, or so it seems, remain towards fixing the current woes being experienced by someone like Kevin Magnussen.

Which is why Gunther Steiner added the following perspectives about the experienced Danish driver:

“With Kevin, we now understand why he is struggling so much. The car is very difficult to drive and he has a little more trouble with it than Nico.”

That being told, what was done by the American racing outfit to fix the woes that are currently being faced by the two drivers, especially Kevin Magnussen who has had such a hard time racing this year?

“That’s another reason why we decided to fix it. Big changes were never really planned and we also want to make sure Kevin can work on getting along better in peace, so that he didn’t always have to think about his contract. You also have to look at what the alternatives would have been,” he added. “In the end there was no reason to change anything.”