Schumacher misses race after massive qualifying shunt
Haas driver Mick Schumacher did not start the 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix because of his enormous Q2 shunt.
The German was chasing a first career Q3 appearance when he had to correct a small oversteer snap running through the fast Turn 9 right with five minutes of the middle segment of qualifying remaining. This had a knock-on effect one corner later at Turn 10, because he was therefore running slightly off line and so went hard over the exit kerbs.
His VF-22 bottomed out and he speared left into the wall on the track’s inside, then slid down the following short straight with heavy damage.
Schumacher remained in his cockpit making sure he was physically “100%” and thinking about “being annoyed by the fact that this happened, and obviously just reflecting on what I’d just gone through, and what I could have done better” before he was attended to by F1’s medical car personnel. The 23-year-old was taken to the Jeddah track’s medical centre by ambulance, where he was checked over and then helicoptered to a nearby hospital for a precautionary scan. This confirmed that he had escaped serious injury.
Even though he was “ready to go racing” the next day, Haas opted against rushing to repair his car, for two reasons. One was that only the car’s survival cell and engine had emerged undamaged – at an estimated parts cost of $500,000 to $1million. So it was decided that the lack of spares so early in the season meant Haas could not afford to rush a repair job and, as team boss Guenther Steiner put it, “find out you’ve compromised yourself so much because you did everything in a hurry” in any subsequent accident either in Jeddah or Melbourne.
The race had only 18 starters: Yuki Tsunoda’s car suffered what Alphatauri called a “driveline” problem on the way to the grid. That issue came a day after a water system problem prevented him from taking any meaningful part in Q1.
What’s your reaction to seventh one week on from such pain in Bahrain?
From last week 100%
[I would have taken it]. So, I’m happy. It would’ve been lovely to finish sixth, but I think the yellow flag [at Turn 1] just hurt me a bit, as I couldn’t gap Esteban [Ocon] as much as I needed to. Positives, I guess made the most of it. Just a shame we couldn’t have both cars in the points.
How was your race overall from 11th to seventh?
I don’t think we were too good in the first part and honestly we struggled a little bit with the tyres compared to some others. But we boxed under the safety car and that helped us gain a couple of positions, which is a little bit a part of our plan. But the pace on the hard at the end was strong. We jumped [Pierre] Gasly, I got past Daniel [Ricciardo] and caught Esteban towards the end, but [Alpine] just had much better straightline speed than us – like a lot better.
Is the MCL36 better in races than qualifying?
It’s mixed. We could have been ahead of the Alpines [in the race], and in qualifying we had no chance of being ahead of them. So you would say so.
Maybe it’s a bit of us going forward a little bit and they go backwards.
Any car changes from
Bahrain to Jeddah?
The difference is the track, we’ve really not changed much. If we went back to Bahrain [now], we’ll be finishing in Q1 and last place pretty much again. There are not a lot of positives in those terms. But there are positives in terms of, if there are tracks like here, similar to Barcelona, then we can look forward to those tracks to score some good points and be raceable and competitive. But I’m not confident if we went back to slower speed tracks, Monaco and Bahrain and tougher tracks, that we’re going to be that competitive at all.