Kevin Magnussen asked his wife for permission to return to Formula 1 after he had already accepted the job

• Kevin Magnussen returned to F1 after a year away when Haas needed a 2nd driver on eve of the season.
• When team boss Guenther Steiner called, Magnussen quickly agreed to come back.

Taking risks is in the nature of race car drivers, but Kevin Magnussen may have taken it a step further when he agreed to rejoin Haas before the season.

On the eve of the first race of 2022, Haas suddenly needed a second driver when they parted ways with Russian driver Nikita Mazepin and their top sponsor, Uralkali, over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Uralkali is partly owned by Mazepin's father, Dmitry Mazepin, an oligarch with ties to the Kremlin.

During a recent interview with Tom Kollmar and Michel Milewski for the German magazine Sport Bild, Magnussen was asked what the call was like when team principal Guenther Steiner called and asked him to come back to Formula One. Magnussen might have handled the situation backward.

"He quickly got to the point and asked me, 'Do you want to go back to Formula 1, and are you ready for it?'" Magnussen told Sport Bild. "I didn't think for a second. I immediately agreed. After that, I called my wife and asked her for her permission."

When Magnussen was asked if that was the wrong order, he laughed.

"Probably," Magnussen said. "But I told her gently. She knew that this was a unique opportunity. I actually already had written Formula 1 off."

The hardest part of coming back on short notice was being able to hold his head up

While Magnussen's wife may have forgiven him for how it came about, the Danish driver had a tougher challenge — his neck muscles.

After seven years in F1, Magnussen spent the 2021 season with sports car racing franchise the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA), where the G-forces on the head are not nearly as strong.

When Sport Bild asked if he was surprised by his early season success, including a fifth-place finish in his first race, he said he was because his neck wasn't ready, and he could barely hold his head up in high G corners.

"I did that year without cockpit training," Magnussen said. "But the pressure in the car is so great that the body only gets used to the forces while driving.

"When I learned a week before the opening race in Bahrain that I would race, I immediately started with fitness sessions. This was conditioning assistance. After the first two [races], I could hardly hold my head up."