Magnussen not troubled by Hamilton comparisons

2014 F1 season

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Kevin Magnussen says he doesn’t feel under pressure to live up to the standard set by Lewis Hamilton at McLaren.

Next year Magnussen will become the first rookie to make his F1 race debut for the team since Hamilton in 2007. Hamilton finish on the podium in his first nine consecutive races and came within a point of winning the world championship that year.

“The fact that Lewis did exactly what I’m doing now is a positive for me, said Magnussen. “It shows that the team has been there before, and has already prepared a rookie for his grand prix debut.”

“The fact that Lewis was so successful doesn’t raise the pressure for me, it just shows that it can be done, and that you can be successful as a rookie. That’s really encouraging.”

Magnussen will also have to contend with a radical overhaul in the technical formula next year with the introduction of new 1.6-litre V6 turbo engines and more powerful energy recovery units.

“It’ll be a new challenge for everyone, not just for me,” said Magnussen. “Everyone’s going to have to learn about the 2014 cars – not just myself.”

“It’s a good year to come into F1. The fact that I won’t have as much experience as some of the other drivers actually counts a little bit less – of course, it’s still going to require a lot of hard work – and I’ll have a lot to learn – but so will everyone else, so that’s a positive for me.”

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Image © McLaren/Hoch Zwei

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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25 comments on “Magnussen not troubled by Hamilton comparisons”

  1. Well he’ll never have to worry about people in Spain painting their faces white and putting on blonde wigs.

  2. Lewis was given a decent car back then. Can Maclaren do the same again??

    1. I hope so! Back then the regs aligned themselves well with Hamiltons driving style, he was able to grab that thing by the scruff of it’s neck and purely race it lap in lap out. Now the lads doing his best (like a lot of others) to get used to controlling his race pace and strategy thanks to the tires. If Kev can come in and straight away get to grips with the current regs & tires he has a massive chance of doing what Hamilton did (like he said the new regs give him a more level playing field), if all the talk about him is true of course.

  3. This is slightly off topic but Magnussen has possibly the best chance of any F1 rookie after 2014 if you crunch some numbers. If you add together the story of Ron Dennis trying to buy out his partners to regain control of Mclaren (and thus the F1 team) the impending arrival of Honda, and the fact that Ross Brawn appears to be going on a “6 month leave period”, what do you come up with?

    1. 2015 Team Dennis/Brawn/Alonso/Magnussen?

      1. But then Alonso will not come to Mclaren if Magnussen is fast. He does’nt like fast rookie team mates. + Dennis will never Hire Alonso….

        My Guess it could be Samsung (????) – Honda – Brawn – Alonso – Button

        Button has close Connections with Japan ;) and he is a friend of Alonso but he is slower than Alonso. So it will make sense. Brawn Is connected with Button, Brawn would like to do another WDC with Alonso and Honda is a close neighbor of Samsung.

        1. Unless Magnussen is a disaster, I can’t see McLaren putting their prized rookie in to the world of F1 this year just to drop him in 2015 so that Button ends up being the one to partner with this supposed Alonso return.

  4. McLaren must have a lot of faith in Magnussen’s ability to give him a seat right away in a top team without any experience in midfield teams first. The last time they did that, with Hamilton, it worked out fantastically, but I’m not sure if Kevin has the same talent that Lewis had.

    1. …or they’re desperate and going for a Hail Mary play.

    2. @kingshark Initially they would have prefered to set him in a FI, but I guess McLaren absolutely wanted him in F1 this year with Vandoorne a possible future for them …

  5. petebaldwin (@)
    6th December 2013, 11:33

    Magnussen is seriously quick. If you look at his past record in Championships, he has been there or there abouts every year. In the last 5 years, his finishing positions across various championships are hugely impressive he’s won two of them, come 2nd twice and 3rd once. The only time he’s struggled was his first year in Forumla Renault 3.5 where he came 7th. The following, he won the championship!

    Whether he is as fast as Hamilton – who knows? One thing is for certain though, in a time where money tends to overshadow talent, McLaren deserve a lot of credit for giving someone like Magnussen a chance.

  6. Well Kev….Make sure you don’t out-qualify your lacklustre team mate in your first season or battle him on track…he’ll have you sacked.

    1. WOW!! Even Schumacher didn’t have that power during his heyday with Ferrari. As a Mclaren driver you are very much an “employee” and don’t get any say in any organisation changes which is why Lewis got more and more frutrated when he couldn’t shake off Button convincingly. Sure he was convincingly quicker in qualy but in every post race parc ferme there was Button right behind him and sometimes in front of him. So because he, like Alonso before him couldn’t get the team to abandon their equal driver treatment policy and favour him he jumped ship.

      1. “Lewis got more and more frutrated when he couldn’t shake off Button convincingly”

        I must have been watching something else if that was the case….

        1. Indeed you must have been!

          1. I remember lewis being far better than jenson last season. How some ppl have short memories. Anyway I hope this boy has a great debut season.

          2. I lol’d

          3. I would agree with the comment if all I did was look at the statistics. I do recall quite clearly that McLaren ruined plenty of races for Hamilton. His final year at McLaren was more than enough to convince me that Hamilton had better race craft. On his day Button is great, but those don’t come around often enough.

      2. I think he was talking about Perez rather than Hamilton.

  7. He sounds verry…….youthful

    But I’m hearing a Youngman with his both his feet still attached to the ground and he seems to show a lot of maturity. I hope he’s the nex revelation, he was verry good in WSR so I have high hopes for this one.

  8. And nor should he feel pressured! Hamilton was one of the last few, and very lucky drivers to benefit from the marathons thats were in-season testing. I remember reading somewhere that by his first GP he had already completed enough km to match a full season.

    We must not compare new drivers to the drivers who came into F1 having benefitted massively from testing. Different rules, different eras.
    You do you, Magnussen. You do you.

    1. +1, the real test for him should be in 2015.

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