BMW had reached out to Magnussen in 2023, before Haas retained him for another season, but BMW swooped in when Haas said it was not renewing his contract for 2025.
“When you are working in motorsport at such a high level, especially Formula 1, for 10 years, this is definitely something which is already a big asset,” Andreas Roos, the head of BMW M Motorsport, said in an interview. “He can bring this knowledge, work attitude and everything; when you manage to stay in this high competition for such a long time then you are one of the best racers in the world, then on top with his experience also in sports car racing for us it was a perfect fit.”
Roos expects Magnussen to “adapt very quickly” to the BMW M Hybrid V8, though he points to the collaborative nature of sports car racing as one area in which Magnussen will need to readjust. At Daytona, which starts on Thursday, he will share driving duties in the No. 24 BMW with Philipp Eng, Dries Vanthoor and Raffaele Marciello.
“You drive together with your teammates, so you don’t have your car for your own, you always have to find a bit of a compromise,” Roos said. “In the end, there are four drivers in the car, and everybody has his own idea and, let’s say, ‘fine-tuning.’ But at the end, the guys have to work as a team and find the quickest compromise where they can drive quickly with the car and have a winning package at the end.”
BMW has two IMSA wins since its program began in 2023 and had its first finish on the podium in W.E.C. in late 2024.
“Clearly our mind-set is winning the race,” Roos said. “We want to win the race — we want to win every race. We are not there just to be a car on the grid, we want to be competitive and win races. It’s clearly our goal. It’s our third 24-hour race in Daytona, we did quite some improvements especially in the second half of the season in W.E.C. and also in IMSA.”
