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Sky Sports exclusive: Sam Michael Q&A on McLaren's 2014 driver decision

Sporting Director on why they are replacing Perez with Magnussen

After taking an unusually long time to announce their driver line-up for next year, McLaren's plans were all finally revealed in the space of 24 hours in Austin as Sergio Perez announced he was leaving the team before they themselves confirmed young Danish protege Kevin Magnussen as his replacement.

CS: If it doesn't go right with Kevin Magnussen, will you feel you might have missed out on a Hulkenberg - and is this issue about him being too big something which has barred his way into McLaren?
SM: "I think you are putting too much emphasis on Nico himself. To be honest, I rate Nico - I was involved in his lower-category career and the start of his Formula 1 career. He's a great driver, but our focus has been internally with Kevin and that's where we've decided to go next year. "When you mention football players who are 26 and 27 and are proven quantities, if you actually look at the grid, we already have a World Champion in one of our cars. Then you have the choice of trying to get another World Champion, and that's not possible at the moment, so then you have the choice of going down a route which you think will create another World Champion. "You have to remember that on all of our Young Driver Programmes, they are there to produce World Champions. They are not there to produce also-rans because, quite frankly, McLaren has the buying ability to go and buy anyone we want on the grid in that situation. So therefore if you look at our programme critically, we believe that Kevin can be a World Champion - the same way that we believe Vandoorne can be and anyone who comes in behind him. If we don't, they don't stay on our programme - it's as brutal as that."

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