Haas chief Guenther Steiner has handed Kevin Magnussen a deadline of five races to improve his form to ensure he remains with the team for 2024.
Magnussen returned to Formula 1 after a season away in 2022 on a multi-year deal and immediately hit the ground running to score points in three of the first four races.
Despite accruing a point in Saudi Arabia, Magnussen has struggled immensely to cope with the arrival of Nico Hulkenberg, with the German outqualifying his team-mate at all three rounds.
While Haas’ form rapidly tailed off the Dane was still able to score a surprise maiden pole position in interchangeable conditions in Brazil and ended the year having scored the bulk of the team’s points, resulting in Mick Schumacher being axed.
At the last round in Australia Hulkenberg delivered a stellar seventh-place finish as Magnussen’s anonymous outing ended with retirement after a bizarre crash on the exit of Turn 2.
“Kevin is not in a happy place at the moment, being behind Nico,” Steiner told the Mirror newspaper.
“He is happy for the team, and he knows the car is there for him to be able to do it – he just needs to get it done.”
With Magnussen’s contract expiring at the end of this year, Steiner has challenged the ex-Renault driver to improve within the next five races to earn a new deal at Haas.
However, Steiner admits he is relaxed about the situation and will not begin to think about alternatives to either of the American outfit’s current two drivers beyond the timeframe he’s set out.
“In the end it is all down to performance but, at the moment, I’m pretty relaxed about it,” he added.
“I want to at least give another five races to see where we are and then start to think about it.”
Daniel Ricciardo, currently in a reserve role for Red Bull following his exit from McLaren last season, is one driver that has been persistently linked with Haas.
Steiner confirmed ahead of the Melbourne weekend that he intends to sit down for talks with the eight-time F1 race winner about a potential seat at some stage.
The Italian team boss is hopeful that Haas can avoid announcing its driver line-up for the next season late in the year like it did with the Hulkenberg and Schumacher switch for 2023.
“Hopefully this year we can confirm what we are doing before the summer break because (a delay is) not nice from my point of view,” he declared.
Hulkenberg’s Australian Grand Prix exploits added to Magnussen’s solitary point in Jeddah and left Haas loitering in seventh in the Constructors’ Championship.
Steiner has credited Hulkenberg for his immediate adaptation to the current generation of cars, but the 35-year-old will encounter a new sort of challenge upon F1’s return in Azerbaijan this weekend.
The one-time F1 polesitter has never contested a sprint race since the format was introduced to a number of weekends to spice up proceedings in 2021.
However, Hulkenberg will be aided by confirmation that alterations have been made to the sprint format from the previous two years, with an additional qualifying session added on Saturday to determine the grid for the 17-lap sprint race the same day.
