Photo: © IMAGO

Former F1 driver Kevin Magnussen has called out the ‘disrespectful’ demands placed on him at McLaren when he joined the team in 2014.

The Dane finished on the podium in his first F1 race with McLaren at the 2014 Australian Grand Prix, where he was promoted to P2 after Daniel Ricciardo’s disqualification, the first debutant to achieve this since Lewis Hamilton in 2007.

However, Magnussen was demoted to reserve driver in 2015 and replaced with Fernando Alonso, recently reflecting on this period in his career with Motor Sport Magazine where he detailed the unrealistic expectations placed upon him.

“I remember Jonathan [Neale, managing director] and Eric [Boullier, racing director] telling me: ‘Lewis was an average of 0.15sec faster than Jenson in qualifying over the three years they raced alongside each other, so, to retain your drive for next year, you should be aiming to beat Jenson by the same margin’,” Magnussen said.

“I accepted it at the time but, looking back, it was unfair.”

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Magnussen tells all from McLaren career

Magnussen also revealed the demand to replicate Lewis Hamilton’s success at the team, an expectation he labelled as ‘crazy’ and also ‘disrespectful’ to his team-mate and 2009 world champion Jenson Button.

“Lewis and Jenson were both F1 world champions, far more experienced than I was, and Jonathan and Éric were telling me that if I wasn’t as good in my rookie season as Lewis had been in his third, fourth and fifth F1 seasons, I’d be out,” he added.

“That was crazy – and also disrespectful to Jenson.”

Following a year long stint as McLaren reserve driver, Magnussen left the team entirely for a full-time seat at Renault in 2016 and then Haas in 2017.

The Danish driver would not achieve another podium result in F1, and it would take him nearly 10 years to achieve his first pole position, which he claimed at the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix.

Magnussen was axed from F1 at the end of the 2024 season, and has turned his attention to sportscar racing in 2025 where he competes with BMW.