BMW had reached out to Magnussen in 2023, earlier than Haas retained him for an additional season, however BMW swooped in when Haas mentioned it was not renewing his contract for 2025.
“If you find yourself working in motorsport at such a excessive degree, particularly System 1, for 10 years, that is positively one thing which is already an enormous asset,” Andreas Roos, the pinnacle of BMW M Motorsport, mentioned in an interview. “He can deliver this information, work angle and all the pieces; if you handle to remain on this excessive competitors for such a very long time then you’re top-of-the-line racers on the earth, then on prime along with his expertise additionally in sports activities automobile racing for us it was an ideal match.”
Roos expects Magnussen to “adapt in a short time” to the BMW M Hybrid V8, although he factors to the collaborative nature of sports activities automobile racing as one space during which Magnussen might want to readjust. At Daytona, which begins on Thursday, he’ll share driving duties within the No. 24 BMW with Philipp Eng, Dries Vanthoor and Raffaele Marciello.
“You drive collectively together with your teammates, so that you don’t have your automobile on your personal, you at all times need to discover a little bit of a compromise,” Roos mentioned. “In the long run, there are 4 drivers within the automobile, and all people has his personal concept and, let’s say, ‘fine-tuning.’ However on the finish, the blokes need to work as a crew and discover the quickest compromise the place they’ll drive shortly with the automobile and have a successful package deal on the finish.”
BMW has two IMSA wins since its program started in 2023 and had its first end on the rostrum in W.E.C. in late 2024.
“Clearly our mind-set is successful the race,” Roos mentioned. “We wish to win the race — we wish to win each race. We aren’t there simply to be a automobile on the grid, we wish to be aggressive and win races. It’s clearly our aim. It’s our third 24-hour race in Daytona, we did fairly some enhancements particularly within the second half of the season in W.E.C. and in addition in IMSA.”
