Haas driver Kevin Magnussen has made a frank admission about the start of his F1 career with McLaren.
Magnussen spent his rookie year with the Woking outfit in 2014 but they dropped him for the following season.
And he’s now opened up on the early difficulties he faced in an interview with The Athletic.
McLaren elected to promote Magnussen from their young driver programme at the start of the turbo/hybrid era.
The Dane would race alongside Jenson Button after replacing Sergio Perez.
He enjoyed a dream debut in Australia as he finished third on the road to score his one and only podium to date.
That would later become second when the stewards disqualified Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo for a fuel breach.
However, the rest of the year would prove to be a struggle.
Magnussen would score just 37 points across the next 18 races and only once finished higher than seventh.
Teammate Button finished four spots ahead in the drivers’ standings (eighth), having amassed more than double the number of points (126 vs 55).
McLaren subsequently decided to axe him for the 2015 season as they re-signed Fernando Alonso from Ferrari.
Kevin Magnussen reflects on McLaren disappointment
Magnussen felt it was difficult to succeed in the McLaren environment in 2014.
The team wasn’t able to compete at the front and he personally struggled to live up to their lofty expectations.
The 31-year-old also says that they should have offered him more support when he fell out of form.
While he doesn’t regret the decision he made, he feels that joining Force India (now Aston Martin) may have been a smarter move.
He said: “I wasn’t strong enough, physically or mentally. I think I got there… I don’t want to say too fast, but in a tricky position, with a big team with big expectations that was struggling.
“I felt like I didn’t have the support that I needed as a young guy struggling a bit.”
“Who wouldn’t have taken the McLaren seat? I was over the moon to race for McLaren instead of Force India.
“In hindsight, it would have been much better to race for Force India. It’s easy to say now, but there’s no way I could have said no back then.”
McLaren relegated Magnussen to a reserve role for 2015, and he stood in for Alonso at the Bahrain Grand Prix after the Spaniard suffered an injury.
He then had the chance to jump ship to Renault in 2016, and he spent a single year with the French manufacturer before joining Haas.
His first stint with the American team lasted from 2017 to 2020, and he returned in 2022 after the team’s unsuccessful stint with Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin.
Will Haas replace Magnussen for 2025?
While Magnussen has now racked up 165 races, most of them at Haas, he faces an uncertain future heading into 2025.
Alongside teammate Nico Hulkenberg, he’s out of contract at the end of this year.
Ferrari junior Oliver Bearman is breathing down the neck of both drivers after his impressive showing in Saudi Arabia.
Bearman stood in for an unwell for Carlos Sainz and bagged the driver of the day award after finishing seventh.
There are close ties between Ferrari and Haas and the Briton will drive in six FP1 sessions for Ayao Komatsu’s team this year.
One journalist has urged the team to ditch Magnussen and field a ‘very strong’ line-up featuring Hulkenberg and Bearman.
The German driver has scored the team’s only point so far this year but he did so with the aid of his teammate.
In a move that angered RB sporting director Alan Permane, he held up a train of cars to create a gap.
That allowed Hulkenberg to maintain a points-scoring position when he made a pit stop.
Magnussen racked up 20 seconds worth’ of penalties after incidents with Williams driver Alex Albon and RB’s Yuki Tsunoda.
But Alpine rival Esteban Ocon felt Haas put him in a ‘very tough’ situation.
Magnussen will return to the site of his podium in Albert Park this weekend and look to get some points on the board himself.
The post 'Didn't have the support': 165-race driver admits he wasn’t ‘mentally’ strong enough at start of F1 career appeared first on F1 Oversteer.