Magnussen was the archetypal Haas driver - but it's time to move on

For all the promise Kevin Magnussen produced during his junior career that prompted McLaren to ditch Sergio Perez for the Dane ahead of the 2014 season, he never quite fulfilled his potential. 

Here was a driver who won races in the 2012 Formula Renault 3.5 championship against the likes of Robin Frijns, Jules Bianchi, Antonio Felix da Costa and Alexander Rossi, before beating Stoffel Vandoorne to the '13 title. 

It's a hard point not to make to suggest that Magnussen's F1 career has been on a downward path since his debut in Australia in 2014. After a remarkable P2 after Daniel Ricciardo was disqualified in the first race of the turbo-hybrid era, Magnussen has never finished higher than fifth in his following 174 race starts.

Of his 46 points-scoring races, only five have been fifth-place or better, including that debut podium. 

He is a driver capable of scoring a points finish when there is one up for grabs but he is also peaky, someone who lacks consistency. His form can ebb and flow, which made him the ideal Haas driver. 

From the strong 2018 season when Haas finished fifth in the constructors' to the slide towards the rear of the field in recent seasons, Magnussen, in his combative style, dragged what pace there was out of the car, usually with some stunning qualifying efforts before Haas deficiencies cost him in the race.

Former team principal Guenther Steiner has spoken of the tough decision he faced at the end of 2020 to drop both Magnussen and Romain Grosjean for an all-rookie line-up of Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin for '21. 

And in Haas's hour of need, Magnussen returned.

The Schumacher test

After Mazepin's dismissal following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, needing a driver at short notice, the call went out to Magnussen, who leapt at the chance to return to grand prix racing for 2022.

His return was useful in multiple ways. 

Firstly, Haas had written off 2021, preferring to focus on the ground-effects rules for 2022, with the Danish racer a respectable, mature, reliable pair of hands to test the new machine and give the team some much-needed direction after the Mazepin disaster as doubts remained about Schumacher. 

Secondly, Magnussen was a useful benchmark for Schumacher, a driver over whom a fair read could not be given after defeating Mazepin in the poor '21 car.

For Schumacher, the case was simple. If he wanted to continue in F1, he would need to handsomely dispatch Magnussen with the minimum of fuss - a useful yardstick, a known quantity with which the German could be measured against.

Instead, Magnussen destroyed Schumacher, who suffered two massive crashes in early 2022 in Saudi Arabia and Monaco. Had Schumacher been ahead of Magnussen, Haas could have perhaps overlooked those incidents.

Instead, as Schumacher was being overshadowed by Magnussen, the decision was obvious to drop the German for compatriot Nico Hulkenberg.

There was the incredible high of pole position at the 2022 Sao Paulo Grand Prix, although this was only for the sprint race with the results of the sprint setting the grand prix grid. But the record books will credit pole that weekend to Magnussen.

Magnussen's departure

That was the peak of Magnussen's F1 career. Since then, there have been a handful of points finishes, but a lot of toil, and the utter desperation of his driving in the Miami sprint to hold up the pack to allow Hulkenberg to score points was hard to watch. 

For that and a further incident in the race, he moved to 10 penalty points and the cusp of becoming the first driver to be banned for reaching 12. 

The threat of that still hangs over him, but he is a driver who has made peace with the fact that the F1 journey is coming to an end, eyes turned by what the likes of former fellow midfield dweller Marcus Ericsson has done in winning the Indy 500, doing so in 2022.

Magnussen was a driver who brought Haas stability and structure just when it needed it most during its formative years in F1, but boss Ayao Komatsu is prepared to take it to the next level now, giving the highly-rated Oliver Bearman a full-time rookie seat in a change of direction for the team. 

Unfortunately for Magnussen, his ceiling is clear and he won't get any better or worse than he currently is.

Bowing out and going on to enjoy the wider motorsport world after seven full seasons for a midfield driver at a midfield team is the perfect way to depart.