Kevin Magnussen, hailing from Denmark, currently competes for the Haas F1 Team in Formula One.
He is the son of Jan Magnussen, a former Formula One driver and four-time winner of Le Mans.
Having been a part of the McLaren team’s Young Driver Programme, Magnussen drove for McLaren in the 2014 Formula One World Championship, joining the team as a replacement for Sergio Pérez. As per the new rule for that season, each driver had to select a car number for their entire Formula One career, and Magnussen chose number 20, which he had used when winning the Formula Renault 3.5 championship in 2013 while driving for DAMS.
He performed exceptionally well during pre-season testing in Jerez and Bahrain, leading the timesheets on both occasions. In his debut race in Australia, he secured a fourth place on the grid. Despite encountering oversteer through wheelspin at the start, he managed to avoid a crash and overtook Hamilton’s struggling Mercedes in the early stages of the race. Magnussen then held his position to finish in third place, just 2.2 seconds behind Red Bull’s Ricciardo. With this finish, Magnussen made history as the first Danish driver to podium in Formula One and the first debutant since Hamilton in 2007 to finish on the podium in his first Grand Prix.
After a stint with McLaren, Magnussen signed with Renault in 2016, lasting one season. Then, from 2017 through to the end of the 2020 season, he raced for Haas but departed the team at the end of the season.
After a break from the sport, in 2022, Magnussen inked a new multi-year contract to rejoin Haas and the F1 grid.
