[Anonymous]

In the past 3 seasons, Kevin Magnussen has gone from Formula Renault 3.5 to a McLaren F1 seat to ‘test and reserve driver.’ Surely such an up-and-down career trajectory can’t have been part of the McLaren junior plan – and shows there was little thought of career development here.

So … couldn’t McLaren take a part share of Caterham, put Jean Alesi in charge (as was the plan during the customer car era using year-old McLarens) and run Magussen and Stoffel Vandoorne in the two cars? I wouldn’t have thought it would cost much to buy this team – and McLaren’s test squad is big enough to staff ‘McCaterham.’

So McLaren could have their own Toro Rosso, and give their junior programme some credibility by showing there is a real chance of an F1 seat – and boost the grid!

Anyone have any views?

[George]

I doubt McLaren can afford it or have the manpower, they don’t have the resources of Red Bull or Ferrari. Who knows what agreement Kevin has with them. There will certainly be a bit of a queue at McLaren in the next few years though, Vandoorne can probably do one or two more years in feeder series then he’ll have to be in F1 in some capacity, and de Vries will be on the scene by then too.

I don’t think you can really blame McLaren though, they were obviously expecting Kevin to learn alongside Button, then Alonso suddenly became available and they could hardly turn him down.

What I hope happens is a smaller team takes one of their drivers in return for a cheaper engine/drivetrain deal (I’m not sure this would happen as Honda quite often like to place Japanese drivers in), like Bianchi at Marussia. Magnussen could use a year in the midfield to sort out his driving, he had some speed this year but he got in way too many incidents, he needs to cool off a bit and let the results come to him.

[ForzaAlanRabbit]

Hopefully he’ll get another chance to prove himself and to be honest I hoped he’d stay at mclaren for another year alongside button. Alonso should have stayed at Ferrari but it was his decision to move that shook up the line-ups so much

[Craig Woollard]

Ron Dennis made it clear that he is against the whole b-team idea. Magnussen needs to be in something decent next year, ideally somewhere where he will be racing against some top level racers. The most realistic suggestion I have seen so far is that he does a season in Super GT in addition to his F1 testing role, but I feel that the talent in that category is far from adequate enough. If I were McLaren, I’d ensure that he is in a LMP1 or a Honda-powered IndyCar. However seats are disappearing in both categories.

[ForzaAlanRabbit]

Kevin should go to indycar

[mark adams]

I don’t think indycar is the way to go for Kevin. All the top teams are full and they have the best engineers.
Indycar doesn’t change their car every year, the other drivers know the cars for 3 years now and unless he wins the championship Zanardi style, they won’t consider him for a f1 drive. indycar is full of drivers who almost got to f1
or failed in f1 if he can’t beat them that would look bad.

[Broke84]

ESPN have revealed from his twitter account that he will not be driving in any FP sessions, seems to me that unless he is given a drive elsewhere that he is destined to be the next Gary Parfett

[Mathers]

I’d like to see him do the Super Formula season, Honda have a big presence and the grid is top quality competition. The cars are the closest thing to F1 around, so it’ll keep his eye in at racing speeds as well.

[Author]

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