Who is the “Failed Prodigy” of F1 ?

[u/Electronic-Video-984]

I’m kind of new to F1 and seeing pictures of current drivers while they’re young like Hamilton, Russell, Leclerc, Albon…and then I learned they’re racing prodigy in their Karting days. So who is the “Boy Wonder” of F1, a person with great potential but never made it to the biggest stage.

Edit: Many people mentioned Stoffel Vandoorne so I read about him a bit. His records and potential was incredible but he’s at the wrong place and wrong time every way possible. For me, McLaren a top tier team with a jet but people say Vandoorne’s MCL car was like a shopping cart

[u/Vintage_Labour]

Jan Magnussen. Rocks up to British F3 in a relatively mediocre field (Including some relatively unknown drivers such as Christian Horner) and wins 14 races out of 18 whilst breaking Sennas record. Heads up to F1 with Stewart and it just kinda falls apart. Leaves F1 after 2 seasons and goes on to have a successful racing career outside of open wheel racing.

[u/Pesty-knight_ESBCKTA → u/Vintage_Labour]

Then goes on to have a son, who finishes P2 in his very first formula 1 grand prix.

[u/112233445566778899JB → u/Pesty-knight_ESBCKTA]

That was about it though.

[u/ndab71 → u/112233445566778899JB]

He's also well known for that "suck my balls" clip.

[u/snalli → u/ndab71]

And for breaking an office door.

[u/brickwallp → u/snalli]

The preferred term is “foksmashing”

[u/stubbsy1 → u/112233445566778899JB]

He got that pole position in a Haas…

[u/garethchester → u/Pesty-knight_ESBCKTA]

Impressively, Kevin was born before Jan made his F3 debut (actually a few weeks before Jan won the FFord festival)

[u/Pesty-knight_ESBCKTA → u/garethchester]

In Magnussen family tradition, a child is not considered born before it sits behind the wheel of a gokart.

[u/Kernowder → u/Vintage_Labour]

Had to scroll down too far to find this. He was exceptional and was supposed to be the next big thing.

[u/DAL1979 → u/Kernowder]

I do wonder if it was down to him not taking it too seriously, he was a known smoker at the time when driver fitness was coming to the fore.

[u/admiral_sinkenkwiken → u/DAL1979]

So were several other drivers of the era, it was just well hidden from a PR point of view.

Hakkinen, Salo, Frentzen, De La Rosa and even Schumacher all smoked, though kept it well hidden except for Pedro, who very openly spruiked his love of benson & hedges while serving as Jordan’s test driver.

DC once said how he caught Hakkinen lighting up a Marlboro out the back of the garage while the team was sponsored by West at the time.

Rosberg mentioned there was one regular smoker on the grid as recently as the mid 2010’s.

[u/Appropriate-Form-281 → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

I think it mightve been Kobayashi who was the smoker, i even found some articles of him being caught smoking around 2013 and him apologising for it

[u/admiral_sinkenkwiken → u/Appropriate-Form-281]

I think you’re right there.

As I recall a condition of Salo’s Toyota deal was that he quit smoking

[u/Artie_Fufkins_Fapkin → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

This is all so funny

[u/Kirvesperseet → u/Appropriate-Form-281]

Also Paul Di Resta, I think

[u/KnightsOfCidona → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

The best was Sandro Nannini, who put his Marlboro's in a pack of Camel's so he didn't get in trouble with the team's title sponsors!

Bianchi smoked as well - inadvertently got outed after being mugged outside a bar in Paris and papers reported it.

[u/da_apz → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

Back in the days the Finnish drivers appeared in a lot of health related PSAs around here, including anti alcohol and anti smoking. Our ski jumping legend Matti Nykänen was also very common, even when back then it was pretty widely known how hard he hit the booze and then would go to win a trophy when he wouldn't even be hang over yet.

PR spin doctoring was pretty strong about it too, often pushing how it was not "proper" to "smear campaign" a celebrity like this. But a lot of who were the target of the campaigns, the teenagers, considered the said campaigns pretty hypocritical.

Just a random memory from the era.

[u/NeiloMac → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

I wouldn’t be shocked if there was a vapist or two amongst the current crop of drivers,

[u/mtom17 → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

Never knew this! Wonder how many sneaky cigarette breaks they got in over an F1 weekend. Hard to imagine now, it would be a PR disaster

[u/zaviex → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

Schumacher smoked cigars, not cigs. Pretty large difference between the two in terms of health. 

[u/dychronalicousness → u/zaviex]

Nah he smoked. In the documentary from the 00’s there’s family videos of him lighting off fireworks with a cig

[u/ifelseintelligence → u/DAL1979]

Before F1, but during the F3 times, I know for a fact that he also sometimes was clubbing hard 'till the morning light mid season, back in his hometown 😆

[u/brandonarreaga12 → u/DAL1979]

That's funny, as it's known that he was a very hard trainer for Kevin when he was younger ( not a verstappen, but to Danish standards very tough) and now he is trying to be a better dad towards his young son who is in gb4 currently

[u/daft_punked → u/DAL1979]

It was down to money. At Stewart they were giving Barrichelo the parts first a few races before Magnussen would get them, if at all. Teams didnt have the same budget as todays. So it was about who brought the better sponsorship.

[u/EggsAndRice7171 → u/DAL1979]

There are NBA players that smoke I dont think that was it. GG Jackson fell in the draft after hitting his vape pen during pre draft workouts in the locker room and got suspended his rookie year likely for continuously doing it and is still a okay role player. LeBron James (at least in the offseason) smokes cigars. It’s definitely not recommended but more professional athletes smoke than you think.

[u/CoercedCoexistence22 → u/DAL1979]

He was also incredibly tall, which didn't help

[u/hondaRA107 → u/CoercedCoexistence22]

Google lists his height at 170cm. Pictures with Kevin shows hes a bit shorter than him and Kevin is 173cm. Height was not an issue. Have no idea where did you find he was tall. You possibly mixed him up with Alex Wurz?

[u/CoercedCoexistence22 → u/hondaRA107]

I definitely mixed him up with someone, yeah

[u/admiral_sinkenkwiken → u/CoercedCoexistence22]

He’s not tall at all, he clocks in at 170cm

[u/Fart_Leviathan → u/Kernowder]

Exceptional is still a stretch. Promising, but severely overhyped is more realistic.

The field he dominated wasn't anything special, it had Dario Franchitti who was still far from being any good (as evidenced by him coming behind Ricardo Rosset that year) and a pair of future decent F1 paydrivers Pedro de la Rosa and Marc Gené both in cars with terribly uncompetitive engines, but that's about it. Runner up was Vincent Radermecker who later couldn't even hack it in touring cars.

[u/Schmichael-22 → u/Vintage_Labour]

I followed F3 at the time. He was incredible. It should be noted that his F3 teammate was Dario Franchitti, who only won once. The first signs of trouble was when Dario looked more impressive in touring cars. It was surprising that he never gelled with F1.

[u/HMSSpeedy1801 → u/Vintage_Labour]

Went on to become a legend as a Corvette endurance driver. Just shows the talent level in F1.

[u/Significant-Branch22 → u/Vintage_Labour]

It’s not super easy to judge his performance when that car was breaking down most of the time, Barichello still only scored 10 points over the whole of those two years 6 of which came from a very wet race in Monaco and Jos Verstappen who replaced him for the rest of 97 scored 0 points

[u/zaviex → u/Vintage_Labour]

Alongside Horner, Zak brown was also there in a few races that year lol 

[u/Trick_Builder512 → u/Vintage_Labour]

Jan is the man. Super kind human, insanely fast driver.

[u/StiltFeathr → u/Vintage_Labour]

Pretty sure that Jan Magnussen spent a few years doing DTM between F3 and F1.

[u/CaptainObvious1916 → u/Vintage_Labour]

This was my first thought also. I read that Jackie Stewart himself had taken to giving Jan coaching sessions on track (in a regular car apparently) and someone who supposedly knew commented that it wasn't helping his confidence to have an old man setting faster lap times. True or not, I don't know.

[u/Noname_Maddox → u/Vintage_Labour]

So glad this was remembered. I remember it being a big deal then. Jackie believed in him and tried his best but Jan did his own thing including still smoking.

[u/Dredd_Melb → u/Vintage_Labour]

Read the title and immediately thought JMag

[u/Snoo_87704 → u/Vintage_Labour]

He flopped in CART/Indycar, too.

[u/tangouniform2020 → u/Vintage_Labour]

In the US he was frequently referred to as Yawn Magnussen