Magnussen admits F1 future is ‘make-or-break’

Kevin Magnussen

Kevin Magnussen admits his rookie season with McLaren was always likely to be "make-or-break" for his F1 career.

McLaren has yet to confirm its driver line-up for 2015, with Magnussen and team-mate Jenson Button being made to wait while Ron Dennis and Eric Boullier assess which drivers are available. While Button has over 250 grands prix behind him, Magnussen is in his first season and being dropped could prove costly to his hopes of staying in F1, but he told Crash.net during an exclusive interview that it is a situation he has prepared himself for.

"The way I see it is I've always known that if I don't deliver this year then that's it," Magnussen said. "I've got one chance and I think I'm doing OK. It does put pressure on you because when the press starts talking about it because then it makes many people talk about it and you can feel a bit of negative energy coming from that. But you have to deal with it and it's not a massive problem because I knew when I pushed to get this seat that if I go for this seat it's my one opportunity and it's going to be make-or-break. I knew what I was going in to and I think I'm doing OK."

And Magnussen explained that he felt that he was being given the best possible opportunity to prove himself as an F1 driver, and if he couldn't impress McLaren this year then it means he's not good enough.

"With this opportunity that I have with McLaren, the way I look at it is if I can't succeed straightaway with McLaren now and be good enough for them then I won't ever be good enough. So there's no reason for me to go for a smaller team and work my way up because if I can't do it straight away then I'll never be world champion. I'm not here for anything other than world championships. I don't want to be here driving around and finishing races and scoring points.

"I only want to win and if I can't do that – if I can't see that I have a future with wins and championships – then I'm not up for Formula One, I'll do something else where I can win. I believe I can win, I've proved to myself that I know I can do this. It was a big change but at least I'm convinced, so I need to just keep doing hard work and show that I'm doing everything I can in every race." crash.net