In nine seasons, he will have alternated between the good and the less good. After a final campaign in 2024, the man with 185 Formula 1 starts is bowing out. Although his career in Formula 1 was not hugely successful, he still left his mark, both positively and negatively. A trend which was also observed in 2024, where he sometimes showed all his aggressiveness on the track, attracting the anger of other drivers, but also his speed, as evidenced by his seventh place at the Mexican Grand Prix. .
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A pace that remains below that of Hülkenberg
Despite everything, the difference with Hülkenberg remains significant. While the German finished the championship in 11th place with 41 points, the Dane only collected 16 and finished only in 15th position. If the car was much faster than in 2023, when the American team finished last in the constructors' championship, the former Force India driver was regularly faster than his teammate, particularly in the lap exercise. fast, where he several times managed to extract the precious tenths of a second necessary for competitiveness in the middle of the grid. Over the entire season, the Dane was 0.16 seconds slower in qualifying, which often prevented him from reaching Q3 and then obtaining convincing results in the race.
Very rough defenses to protect your teammate
However, this position at the back of the grid often allowed him to carry out strategies that were different from his opponents. If the car suffered a lot last season in terms of tire degradation, it made progress in this area in 2024. Indeed, at the start of the season, on circuits like Jeddah or Miami, the Dane was in some way sacrificed by his team, which asked him to significantly slow down the peloton behind him in order to allow Hülkenberg to escape and emerge in front of all his opponents in the pit stop game.
If this directive allowed Haas to score important points, it also attracted the wrath of other teams. With much cooler tires, Magnussen still had to manage to keep the peloton behind him, which sometimes led to incidents, like in Miami.
During the sprint race, he was handed three ten-second penalties as well as three penalty points on his superlicense for leaving the track and gaining an advantage in his battle with Lewis Hamilton. The next day, he was penalized two additional points for his collision with the Williams of Logan Sargeant. An aggressive behavior which ended up failing him. After another incident, this time with Pierre Gasly, he became the first driver to receive a racing ban after accumulating 12 penalty points on his license. If we add to this his withdrawal from Brazil due to illness, Magnussen's 2024 season was not a smooth ride.
A more convincing end to the season
However, it was not as bad as one might think. After a timid start to the season (1 point from the first 10 races), the former McLaren driver experienced a resurgence in form with an eighth place in Austria, a ninth place in Qatar, but above all a seventh position in Mexico, two places in front of Hülkenberg.
Despite everything, his performances did not convince Haas to keep him in the seat in 2025 for what would have been his tenth season in the discipline. Next year, Ayao Komatsu, boss of the American team, has decided to recruit Esteban Ocon from Alpine, Haas' main rival at the end of the season, as well as the young Briton Oliver Bearman, former Formula 2 driver at Prema. A new association that risks sparking.
