Kevin Magnussen ‘ready to f*** s*** up’ with FIA race ban served and clean licence

Kevin Magnussen has returned from his race ban and joked he’s ready to “f**k s**t up” in the last seven races of the F1 2024 championship.

The Haas driver sat out the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after accumulating 12 penalty points on his FIA super licence for various incidents throughout the year, and now has a fully clean licence for the rest of the season.

Kevin Magnussen: Race ban threat isn’t a factor any more

With Magnussen clocking up the penalty points here and there throughout the season, he became the first driver in 12 years to receive a race ban after he was given two penalty points for a racing incident with Pierre Gasly at Monza.

Sitting out the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as F1 2025 Haas signing Oliver Bearman was called up to substitute, Magnussen is back at the wheel of his car for the Singapore Grand Prix weekend and the rest of the season.

“It was a weekend off,” Magnussen said of his race ban, saying it was “weird” seeing his car being driven by someone else in a Grand Prix.

“A little extra bonus weekend off with the family. So, in many ways, nice to have that little surprise holiday. But yeah, I watched some of the race, I had it on in my gym on Sunday. And kind of was watching with half an eye with training. So tried to switch my mind off. Didn’t want to… I took the opportunity to have a nice weekend off.”

A quirk of the rules is that, following the serving of a race ban, the offending driver is put back to zero penalty points – and Magnussen joked he now has the freedom to go wild on track without the threat of another race ban.

“Yeah exactly!” he chuckled as he was asked by media in Singapore when asked about being able to use up the last seven races of the season without any concerns over penalty points.

“I mean, it’s kinda… you get punished, and then you come back, and you’re like all ready to… f**k s**t up now! It’s funny how that works.

“In a way, it hasn’t really affected me. I think, with those points, it was annoying to have the knowledge that the next time anything happens, there’s a race ban. It’s nice to know that’s not a factor anymore. But I actually don’t think it has affected me in how I’ve driven. I’ve really tried to say ‘Look, I need to crack on here’, and whatever happens happens.

With his F1 career hanging in the balance as he is without a confirmed seat for F1 2025, Magnussen confirmed he has no update on his future, and that the fact he now has a fully clean licence won’t impact the way he approaches the last seven races of the year.

“I don’t think it’s going to change anything,” he said.

“In that moment in Monza, in all the battles I’ve had, I’ve never found myself thinking ‘Oooohhhh, I need to be careful here, otherwise I get a race ban’. In those races before Baku, before the race ban, I didn’t think about it.”

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Kevin Magnussen: It’s nice to have had support over penalty points situation

With Magnussen earning his race ban through a series of relatively minor incidents, as opposed to egregious examples of dangerous driving, there was little support amongst his rivals for the drastic punishment.

Even Gasly, whose incident with Magnussen proved the straw that broke the camel’s back, didn’t feel his rival had done anything unusual or wrong, and Magnussen said it was “nice” that there had been support for his situation.

“My own opinion is it’s not a great situation for F1, I think, to restrict racing in that way,” he said.

“It feels bad when the sport you love so much changes in a way you don’t appreciate. I think I’m certainly one who, I like hard racing, and I think that a big part of the beauty of motorsport is the battles.

“The on the limit and slightly over – that balance between going slightly over and under the limit is what makes your race. At the moment, it feels like they’re punishing ridiculous things.

“I’d like to see, personally as a Formula 1 fan, the sport open up again and allow the great racing that can be seen on track.”

As a result of that, Magnussen made the case for keeping the awarding of penalty points to just the more blatant examples of dangerous driving, rather than needing to hand out penalty points for all sorts of transgressions – particularly given the increased number of races (30, including Sprints) compared to the 18 or so when the penalty point system was first introduced, with no increase in the penalty points allowance since 2014.

“Maybe it would be better to kind of give race bans for extraordinarily dangerous driving, or for a specific incident, and not like accumulate,” Magnussen said.

“Because it can get into situations where you get punished harder than others because, like in my case, I came into the season with zero points, accumulated all of them, and then I knew the rest of the season that none of these points were running out. So I actually got punished harder because of not having had any points last year. So in a way, I should have got some points last year!

“But yeah, I just think it’s a very complex thing. So for me to sit here and say we should ‘do this, this and this’, and that would be the right way forward is very difficult.

“I’ve raced in IndyCar, I’ve watched the races on television, and I think they have it going over there. They have fantastic racing. The drivers are respectful to each other. They’re left with that responsibility in their hands, and I think that works.

“It has to be tough, and these cars are put on track with the knowledge that they might get damaged, and if they do, the driver that damages the car, he gets penalised naturally.

“I think the only thing that is different in Formula 1 to IndyCar are the tracks. The tracks are not great for racing, with all this track limits stuff, I got all my penalty points pretty much for track limits. At the end of the day, I think that’s kind of stupid, to be a few centimetres out of a white line and end up with a race ban because of that, it’s not the sport I love.”

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