Kevin Magnussen Just Earned Haas an F1 Pole

This time last year, Kevin Magnussen had no chance of returning to Formula 1. He was set to contest the 2022 World Endurance Championship season as a Peugeot prototype driver, while Haas F1 was planning to run its second straight year with a driver lineup of Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin. Then, Russia invading Ukraine led to Mazepin's sudden firing just weeks before the season. Magnussen, a driver with Haas for four seasons, was ready to drop everything to rejoin the team at a test. He was signed within days, a deal that paid off immediately with a fifth at Bahrain after a 2021 season without a single point. Now, after a miraculously-timed run in Q3 at Interlagos, Magnussen has given the team its first-ever pole.

While timing helped Magnussen win pole, he would never have earned the chance without a monster lap in the second round of knockout qualifying. Magnussen qualified an unexpected seventh, locking him into a strong starting position for a team whose expectations usually float closer to 15th. That put him in position to take a risk, heading out immediately onto a drying track with slick tires. He set the quickest time early, then rain began to fall again with eight minutes left in the session.

With no time left for the track to dry, Magnussen's pole was a near-lock. He leapt from the car when it became official just a few minutes later. It is the team's first-ever pole, nearly seven full seasons since the program opened its doors in 2016.

Magnussen is not guaranteed to start first on Sunday, however. While he is by rule the race's official pole-sitter, the actual starting grid will be set by tomorrow's sprint race. A win for Haas in that event would be unprecedented, at the same time earning him the first-ever victory upset in a sprint race and little more than the starting position he already earned in qualifying.

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