Magnussen refuses to be drawn on 'bad luck' theory

Kevin Magnussen does not accept his difficult season with Haas can be explained away by saying he has had "bad luck."

The 31-year-old, who has not been retained by Haas for next season, feels it is reductive and "not useful" to use such rhetoric, arguing there have been "too many mistakes" so far this year.

Magnussen has been out-performed by Nico Hulkenberg and trails his team-mate 22 points to five in the drivers' standings.

Now, the Danish driver faces an uphill battle to save his F1 career. The only viable seats remaining for 2025 are at Alpine and Stake, alongside Hulkenberg, and he is not seriously considered to be in the hunt for either.

Earlier in the year, Magnussen said that is has been his worst start to a season he has experienced. However, when asked what specifically has not been clicking during the current campaign. 

"We've made just too many mistakes," he told select media including RacingNews365. "I think there's been a lot more potential.

"When you run into traffic so often in qualifying and it keeps repeating itself, mentally it just gets tiring.

"Many of those times, I can honestly say, if I could turn back time and done it again, of course, you would have done different, but at the time, you would have gone out and said it's bad luck.

"It's like, you can't say that. This is my opinion, you can't. That's not useful, to say: 'Oh, I was unlucky', because there's always something you could have done better."

Perhaps the most noticeable delta between Magnussen and his team-mate has been during qualifying.

Over the first 14 rounds, the Danish driver has been consigned to seven exits in Q1 and Q2 each respectively, meaning he is yet to reach the final part of qualifying this year.

Hulkenberg, meanwhile, has reached the last part of the session on six occasions and has only been eliminated in Q1 three times.

The knock-on effect has prevented Magnussen from scoring better and the qualifying deficit goes some way to explaining the gap between the two drivers in points.

"We've just been in some really tricky situations often in qualifying that has put us out of Q1 when we should have been in Q3," Magnussen pointed out when discussing the factors that have made his season so difficult thus far, before highlighting the underlying pace in the car.

"That turn of events, it could have been way different, and a little traffic, someone coming out of the pit in the last moment when they couldn't even start the lap, or weird things like that, happened quite a few times.

"That's been frustrating, but then, on the other hand, the car has been strong. 

"We've made it back in the races on Sunday a few times, even with a bad starting position. So in that way, it's been a positive year."