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“I ran out of motivation to be running around the back. Those two years were tough and I ran out of motivation to do that.
“Then I went away, did some other racing, grabbed podiums, pole positions, a win, and that was all really fun.
“And I was enjoying it. But then Guenther called me and ruined all that…”
Kevin Magnussen’s joking jibe at his new (should that be old?) Haas team boss gives away the mood he was in ahead of his return to a Formula 1 cockpit on Friday.
He’s back in F1, back at Haas, and it’s like he never left – although not everything’s the same. His Thursday media commitment ran longer than most did when he was last in the paddock.
For a short while this week Magnussen is a hot topic again, thanks to his unexpected return in place of the axed Nikita Mazepin. It comes 16 months on from his supposed final grand prix and just a few days before he was due to race at Sebring as part of his Chip Ganassi Racing IMSA sportscar programme.
Magnussen has enjoyed his 12 months racing in the United States in Ganassi’s Cadillac-badged Daytona Prototype, and was preparing to be part of Peugeot’s return to the Le Mans 24 Hours.
It was a welcome break from the lower-midfield misery that came to define the final two years of his previous four-season spell with Haas.
Although he teased Guenther Steiner for pulling him out of that new reality, the truth is Magnussen needed no convincing.
“I just could feel in my stomach that I wanted to do this,” he said. “I could feel it.
“I didn’t know that I missed it that much. But when I got the opportunity, I was like ‘yeah’.”
Haas moved quickly to scope out Magnussen’s interest in a comeback. Steiner first made contact about a week ago, when Magnussen was heading to the US with his family before Sebring. Magnussen decided to go anyway – he wasn’t sure if the call would come to anything.
“Then I got to Miami and Guenther called back and said ‘yeah, OK, let’s do it’,” Magnussen says.
“So I travelled back. There was a lot of stuff that had to be sorted out. I was contracted to Peugeot and Ganassi.”
Neither of those deals had a clause allowing Magnussen to leave for F1. But neither employer stood in his way. To that, Magnussen says he feels privileged to have worked for true racers who understood his situation – they didn’t like it, but they understood.
But back to Haas. “Well, when he [Steiner] called me I was like ‘hmm, I wonder what he wants now’.” The call surprised him. As did his own enthusiasm.
“I said yes immediately,” Magnussen admits. “Then I thought ‘ah, should I have said yes, was that clever?’.
“And then very quickly I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got to do it, it’s too exciting’.”
Magnussen has been critical of F1 in his absence. He even said he would not come back to race in the midfield. By that, he says, he meant a return to a situation Haas was in back in 2020. That year Magnussen and team-mate Romain Grosjean, who had been regular points challengers for Haas in 2017 and 2018, had been reduced to making up the numbers as the team’s fortunes nose-dived.
That is the situation Magnussen had no interest in returning to. But F1’s major technical rule change for 2022, Haas’s renewed efforts behind the scenes, and a multi-year contract were enough to make him realise he still had a big itch to scratch.
Asked by The Race if it had to be a multi-year deal to be worthwhile, Magnussen said: “Yeah, it did. It did. I mean, it wasn’t something that I sort of said ‘it has to be that’ but I was happy it was.
“Because it wouldn’t make sense to kind of come back for one year – I’ve tried it, I’ve done it, it’s not new to me.
“But coming back properly, and everything Guenther’s saying about the team, how motivated they are – it feels like they’re in a good shape.
“It was just too exciting. I really wanted to do it, I could feel that.”
Haas pulled up Magnussen’s old contract and used that as the basis. There was no need for lawyers, says Steiner.
Truthfully, Haas never wanted to get rid of Magnussen in the first place. The team had fallen into a position where Steiner needed to hire drivers with a budget. That’s what led to the forced union with Mazepin and Magnussen’s exit.
“It didn’t feel like the team really wanted to let me go last time,” Magnussen says.
“It really feels like coming home this time. I’m super chuffed with that, and just looking forward to starting working with them again.”
The feeling is mutual, judging by the reaction from various team members. It seems as though Magnussen’s return is the feel-good factory Haas sorely needed after a couple of years going through the wringer: “I do feel there’s a little more smiles than I saw when I left. That gets me excited.”
None of this means Magnussen’s going to single-handedly transform Haas’s fortunes and neither the team or its returning driver believe that is the case.
Expectations are being kept firmly in check. Haas needs to rebuild after two lean years and Magnussen has to get F1-fit again, in the car and out of it. He’s certainly expecting his neck to suffer after day one, for starters.
But there is obviously a belief from both sides that it’s possible to return to the peaks of 2018 – Magnussen’s best year in F1 and Haas’s too, finishing fifth in the constructors’ championship.
“Guenther didn’t promise anything,” says Magnussen. “He said that they’d been working really hard on it, and given me some indications, and then just walking around, speaking to everyone, and the team, I feel there’s some sort of hype going on.
“Let’s see. I don’t think we’re going for the championship this year but I think there’s a good atmosphere. You can feel something good is coming.
“Our expectations are under control, we know better than to think we’re going to go out and smash it.
“But it’s good that there’s a lot of smiles around the team and everyone is looking forward to it and they’re not scared of going on track with something that’s going to be embarrassing.
“I feel like the team is in a good place.
“Yeah, 2019-2020 were not good. And the team had a tough year last year also. But they basically didn’t develop that car at all, they weren’t working on it.
“With this, there’s been real effort put into it and I think we’re going to be hopefully happier this year.”
One of Steiner’s reasons for targeting Magnussen was that Mazepin’s replacement would be stepping into the team at short notice, halfway through pre-season testing and with minimal running in the second test in Bahrain.
Magnussen’s prior experience helps with that. He slots into working with what would have been Mazepin’s crew, which was actually Grosjean’s side of the garage when Magnussen was last at Haas. However, Magnussen says he knows them well. And he also knows Haas’s processes and working practices, as Haas does of Magnussen.
This will be a relatively seamless reintroduction. Then it’s about what Haas and F1 can expect from Magnussen after a year away. Drivers like Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso had a little bit of a slow adaptation and there’s no reason to think Magnussen will be completely immune to that.
Once he’s shaken off the cobwebs and regained his F1 sharpness, though, who is to say that a year away hasn’t enhanced Magnussen as a person, and by extension a driver?
He certainly sees it like that. He’s matured, became a father, and experienced life outside the F1 bubble. Now he is a calmer person.
“I certainly just feel more relaxed,” he says. “The first time I walked into this paddock as a Formula 1 driver, compared to this time, it’s so different.
“Every year, when you grow a little bit older, you get a little bit more experience and you’re just more relaxed, more content, more chilled. And more able to just enjoy it.”
Magnussen jokes that it’s “funny how time can mess with you” because so much has changed for him outside of racing since the end of 2020: “It feels like 10 years passed if I look outside the paddock, then I walk in and it feels like ‘oh, I never left’.”
When Magnussen walked away last time he did so frustrated at the door being closed to him just as he felt he was peaking as a driver. Few drivers get a second chance at F1. Magnussen is acutely aware of the opportunity he has with this reprieve – because it’s actually his third chance.
It’s easy to forget that the fresh-faced, debut podium finisher who drove for McLaren in 2014 then spent 2015 on the sidelines before returning with the revived (and disappointing) Renault works team in 2016.
Somehow, Magnussen is still only 29. All the more reason to say ‘screw it, I’ll do it!’ as his career offers yet another twist.
“I’m just excited altogether,” he says. “This is the second time I come back to Formula 1, it’s still crazy. The last time was also some crazy circumstances.
“Life is full of surprises. And this is certainly one of the very big ones.”
