Kevin Magnussen Reveals Turning Down Offer From Rival F1 Team for 2021

F1 is a sport like no other, where only 20 drivers get a chance to compete each season. So, because of this cut-throat competition, a lot of driver exits happen at the end of each year. In 2020, Kevin Magnussen was among those who bowed out of the sport.

The Danish driver had been part of the Haas F1 Team for quite some time. But the team was in financial turmoil, which was further worsened by the implications of the Coronavirus pandemic.

So, they had to let him go, along with his teammate Romain Grosjean, to bring in a couple of rookies who likely enabled the team to get some fresh cash injection.

But it may have not been his last swan song in F1 had he accepted an offer from an unnamed team. As revealed by Magnussen, a team offered him a deal to drive for them in 2021, but he refused.

“I can’t really tell me exactly who proposed the contract because it might offend someone if I say that. In any case, this team was not better than Haas, so making decisions was not difficult,” said Magnussen, while in conversation with the Danish magazine Dossier.

There are only a handful of teams that could be considered as bad or worse than Haas. Since they finished 9th in the Constructor’s standings in 2020, the team in question must be the basement boys, Williams. The British outfit could not even muster a single point all season.

Why did Kevin Magnussen opt against prolonging his stay in F1?

F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport; every driver dreams of driving an F1 car, let alone competing across a full season. So why did Kevin reject this opportunity when it presented itself to him?

“Although I had a chance to stay in Formula 1, I no longer had the motivation to continue fighting at the end of the grid. I wanted a chance to win in one of the best teams,” explained the Dane.

One can understand the reasoning behind this decision. The onetime podium winner had been toiling hard in the lower end of the grid for the last few years. His new venture in WeatherTech Sports Car Championship offers an opportunity for him to taste the champagne.

While we are going to miss the Netflix content that his verbal confrontations with Guenther Steiner provided, it is absolutely the best call for his career. He can gain more credibility as a winner some place else rather than being a laughingstock in F1.

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Quotes have been translated from Turkish using Google Translate.