Kevin Magnussen: 'Joke letter from Ron Dennis on my 2nd birthday was ticket to F1'

F1

McLaren thought it would be funny to meet the son of its former test driver, Jan Magnussen. That encounter ended with Kevin Magnussen landing an F1 seat with the team, as he describes in our latest podcast

Kevin Magnussen ahead of the 2014 Australian GP

Kevin Magnussen prepares to make his F1 debut at the 2014 Australian GP

Grand Prix Photo

When Ron Dennis sent a birthday message to two-year-old Kevin Magnussen, the former McLaren boss can’t have imagined that it would be the spark that launched a Formula 1 career.

But 14 years later that note, which joked about Magnussen racing for McLaren in the future, prompted him to get in touch with the team where his dad, Jan, had been test driver.

Despite only racing in a Danish Formula Ford, he was invited to Woking because Martin Whitmarsh, then the team principal, “thought it would be really funny” to meet the son of Jan Magnussen, Kevin said in Motor Sport’s latest My big break podcast.

The joking soon stopped when Kevin’s talent became clear, and it led to him rapidly progressing through the junior formulae, becoming a grand prix driver with McLaren at the age of 21.

Kevin was aged two in 1995 when his dad was McLaren’s reserve driver. Jan made his F1 race debut later that year, replacing an unwell Mika Häkkinen in the Pacific Grand Prix.

“Ron Dennis gave me this birthday present,” he said in the podcast. “I think it was my second birthday or something and it was some toy. With it was a letter: Ron just joking around [saying], ‘If you ever become as good as your Dad, give me a call.'”

In 2008, after winning the Danish Formula Ford Series and looking for ways to progress in his career, Magnussen said that the note came to mind. “I showed my manager this letter and she was immediately like, ‘oh, we got to go for it, call them up, see if they do something’.

“She did and it was Martin Whitmarsh [who picked up] and he thought it would be really funny to meet me because of the relationship with my dad and the history there.

POR

Jan Magnussen (right) had one race for McLaren, stepping in for the ill Mika Hakkinen at the 1995 Pacific Grand Prix

“I didn’t have the results to show for it. It was just because they thought it would be funny to have Magnussen’s son.

“So that’s a place where my name really took me somewhere and opened the door.”

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His name helped get him on the first rung of McLaren’s junior ladder, but Magnussen said that the pressure quickly piled on and he was given no special treatment as he moved up through the series.

At the end of 2012, he had just finished seventh in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series and McLaren issued a blunt ultimatum.

“After my first year [in Formula Renault], I’d had a couple of wins, a couple of pole positions, but it hadn’t been consistent,” said Magnussen.

“So they told me, next year you have to win [the championship], if not, [F1] won’t happen for you. I got halfway through the year and had built up a really good lead. Then [in] the second half of the year, I won every race and took every pole because the pressure just came off. And then yeah, got the seat.”

Magnussen initially thought that McLaren was going to place him at the Force India team but, late in 2013, just before Ron Dennis returned to the team, Sergio Perez was dropped from McLaren and Magnussen announced as his replacement alongside Jenson Button.

“I was thinking that I would go to Force India for some years to develop and learn for McLaren to then take me back if I performed well,” he said.

“Suddenly, Martin Whitmarsh is fired from McLaren and Ron Dennis comes back and things changed, so I got the McLaren drive.”

It started off brilliantly with a podium in Magnussen’s debut race, but that was as good as it was going to get for the Dane.

“It messed up all my expectations,” he said. “It meant they were crazy and wrong because the car we had wasn’t a championship contender.

CEL

At the time of writing, it remains Magnussen’s only podium in F1

“I just won a championship and the next logical step in my mind was to go into F1 and fight for wins, pick up where I left.

“That’s not how it worked and once it became clear that the car wasn’t [a] championship contender, I became very frustrated.”

What was labelled as a “dream move” by Magnussen only lasted one season, after McLaren signed Fernando Alonso for 2015 and elected to keep Button.

Only a vacancy at Renault saved Magnussen from leaving F1. After a year there, he joined Haas where he has been ever since, save for a year out in 2021.

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