RETURN OF THE MACH
The Schumacher name is coming back to Formula 1… but does Mick have what it takes to reach the heights his father scaled?
As the son of one of the greatest drivers ever to have raced grand prix machinery, Mick Schumacher faces tremendous scrutiny as he arrives in Formula 1. This is a significant moment for F1 – and for Ferrari, which has put a great deal of resource into supporting him.
It’s rare for a rookie to be accompanied by so much expectation but, while Schumacher might be joining a lower-midfield team (Haas), he has been the darling of junior formulae in recent years, winning titles in Formula 3 and Formula 2 with high-profile Ferrari backing. Schumacher is the third driver to have graduated to F1 via the Ferrari Driver Academy, following Jules Bianchi and Charles Leclerc.
They are tough acts to follow, only adding to the inevitable scrutiny that the son of Michael Schumacher would face upon making the step up to grand prix level. After defeating a bevy of other youngsters in F2 last year, some also supported by Ferrari, Schumacher has certainly earned his graduation. But are his F1 prospects as spectacular as those whose path – both in name and nurture – he is following?
One man who knows Schumacher well is René Rosin, manager of Prema Powerteam. They first crossed paths when Mick was 16 and taking part in a test, after a quiet first year in German Formula 4 with Van Amersfoort Racing in 2015. Schumacher would go on to remain with Prema for the next five years, making every step up the ladder under the wing of the Italian team.
“We always tried to treat him as a normal driver,” Rosin tells GP Racing. “For us, it was not Schumacher: it was Mick. We tried to keep him very comfortable. If he just felt the pressure, it would be bad for him.
“For sure, a name like Schumacher on his shoulders is bringing pressure. All his life, it’s with him, pressure. But he’s able to manage it, and he grew up with that, and was able to manage it, even in the difficult moments.”
Schumacher ran a dual F4 programme in 2016, finishing as runner-up in both the German and Italian championships (Rosin admits Prema “messed up” the Italian title fight after missing a round) before moving up to F3 the following year. As future Mclaren F1 driver Lando Norris swept to the title, Schumacher accrued just a single podium in a low-key maiden campaign.
A tendency to chase results through overdriving was apparent in the early phase of Schumacher’s second season, prompting Rosin to have a chat.
“Already at the first race at Pau, in the first free practice, he was seven-tenths faster than anyone else – then of course he crashed,” remembers Rosin. “The situation was a bit difficult. He was always fighting for top positions, but he never brought home the results that he needed.
“After Spa [where Schumacher scored his first pole and win] everything got more relaxed. We talked, and said, ‘Mick, just focus race by race, don’t think about the championship itself. If you think about the championship, it will be harder.’”
As his mentality changed, so did the results. Schumacher won a further seven races, including a five-in-a-row sequence, to swing the championship in his favour. He would finish the year comfortably clear of Red Bull junior Dan Ticktum in the title fight, putting himself firmly on the radar for F1 teams.
It never seemed likely Schumacher would land anywhere but Ferrari, though. In January 2019, it was announced he had joined Ferrari’s Young Driver Academy, heralding the return of the Schumacher name to Maranello ahead of his debut season in F2.
Rosin feels Schumacher’s 2018 turnaround is evidence of his willingness to learn and, importantly, take criticism. “That’s one of his great qualities: self-criticism, but he’s also able to accept it,” he says. “If you say something that, initially, he doesn’t like, he takes a bit of time to digest it, but if he thinks that you are right, he will follow you 100%. He’s not arrogant or always thinks to be right. He looks at himself with selfcriticism. That is a great quality.”
F1 drivers are hardly known for their modesty. Many exhibit such unshakeable belief in the majesty of their talents that they inevitably attribute poor results to the inadequacy of their machinery. A notable exception to that rule on the current grid is Leclerc, whose self-criticism is often noisy and unfiltered – notably in Turkey last year, when his team repeatedly had to ask him to cease flagellating himself. A mature degree of introspection is a trait that will serve Schumacher well in F1.
Inevitably Mick’s surname brings an element of expectation and this doesn’t come as news to him – he acknowledges he has been “under the spotlight since a very young age”. But he’s not bothered by it. “I’ve been able to get used to it,” he says. “I would say that I’m able to deal with it pretty well. The results speak for themselves.”
Certain elements of his father’s career remain controversial and the younger Schumacher has already had to deal with trial by media. Mick’s chief rival in F3 in 2018, Dan Ticktum, claimed he was “losing a battle as my last name is not Schumacher”, suggesting there was more to Mick’s mid-season turnaround than met the eye. In a string of frustrated posts and comments on Instagram, Ticktum said he felt “robbed of a championship” and called Schumacher’s pace “interesting”. He stopped short of calling Prema’s car illegal, but claimed the team “may have a special engine map or something”, and that many of his F3 rivals held similar beliefs.
Rosin found the saga “tough”. “The comments were inappropriate,” he says. “If somebody had a doubt about the legality of the car, the legality of the engine, they had all the rights to make all the protests they want. Nobody made a protest.
“They just mentioned that they wanted to protest, but in the end they ran away without doing anything. Nothing was wrong. The title was because Mick and the team did an amazing job.”
It nevertheless left Schumacher with a point to prove upon his graduation to F2, but if he hoped to achieve Leclerc-esque levels of domination in his rookie season, he would be disappointed. His best result in a Saturday feature race was eighth and, although he took a lights-to-flag victory in the Hungary sprint event, overall the year hardly built a convincing case for a would-be F1 driver.
Rosin was happy with what he saw, though. “The fact he had a not very high-performing team-mate in his first season [Sean Gelael] slowed down the progression a bit,” Rosin reflects, before citing “bad luck” for missed results in Baku, Barcelona, Monaco and Paul Ricard, where various incidents – spins, badly-timed Safety Cars, and even a clash with Gelael – proved costly.
“But he never thought that it was over,” Rosin says, again hailing Schumacher’s work ethic and resilience. “He would just continue working. We would just continue working together very hard to make sure that we bounced back in 2020.”
Schumacher’s knack for second-season success in both F4 and F3 translated to F2. While he won just two races and averaged seventh in qualifying last year, Schumacher regularly fought his way to the front in races. He recognises himself it was “definitely the consistency” which paved the way to his title victory ahead of Callum Ilott and Yuki Tsunoda, clinched at the Sakhir outer loop finale.
It was not a result that ensured Mick’s F1 graduation, however, for this had already been announced a few days earlier. A deal had been in the works for some time with Haas, supposedly ensured by a top-three finish in the championship, but the title win gave greater legitimacy to his move up.
“If you bring a championship title on your CV into F1, it’s always great,” says Schumacher. “I have one in F3 and have one in F2. F3 was considered one of the top championships to be in, and it was good to be able to win those titles with great competition. The better the competition, the more you develop as a driver, and I think that’s everything I will carry through to F1.”
Schumacher’s new boss, Guenther Steiner, feels the F2 title was a “big statement” which will provide a platform from which to build.
“IF YOU BRING A CHAMPIONSHIP TITLE ON YOUR CV INTO F1, IT’S ALWAYS GREAT. I HAVE ONE IN F3 AND HAVE ONE IN F2”
“Coming in as champion will give him that initial confidence, when he maybe is struggling in F1 because everything is new,” Steiner says. “He can always go back and say he was the F2 champion. All these things help when coming to F1.”
Confidence is a quality Schumacher may need in his rookie season. Haas endured a miserable 2020 campaign, scoring a paltry three points. Steiner has already made clear that 2021 is a “transition” year for the team, which has opted for minimal development of its car in favour of focusing on the 2022 regulation changes. While there are growing ties with Ferrari through the creation of a ‘Haas hub’ at Maranello, Schumacher and new team-mate Nikita Mazepin – also a rookie, meaning there’s no prior F1 experience to tap into across the garage – are facing a year stuck in the ‘Class C’ battle.
Again, though, Schumacher shows maturity in understanding he can only play the hand he is dealt. “It’s mainly just understanding your goals, and setting your goals accordingly to what you think is possible,” he says. “It is really going to be about managing our expectations and being open-minded on every aspect.
“If you say OK, Q2 is our goal, maybe it is hard to reach, but if we reach it, then it’s like a win for us. So I’ll take it as that to not only observe ourselves, but also to show to the others that we’ll always keep fighting and give our best.”
That may sound like a string of racing driver clichés but Rosin has worked with the likes of Leclerc, Lance Stroll, Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly at Prema, and says industriousness is a key Schumacher virtue.
“He’s a hard worker,” Rosin says. “Until he understands everything, and gets everything to the maximum, he’ll continue working. He’s never somebody that leaves things behind. He needs just to continue working as much as he’s done in the past, and not rest on what he has done. I’m sure he will never do that, knowing him.
“With all of the Ferrari support behind him and all of the Haas support, he will have a great season. Of course it will be a learning season, but I’m sure that he will do great stuff in Formula 1.”
The Ferrari support is especially valuable for Schumacher; he calls it an “emotional bond”. Many of the figures who played a key role in his father’s success are still with the team, adding an extra layer of significance to Mick’s performances. These individuals have revelled in Schumacher’s demonstration runs in his father’s title-winning F2004 car over the past two years, seeing it as a valuable link between Ferrari’s past and future.
But modern-day F1 demands more from drivers than a good backstory. The likes of Norris, George Russell and even Leclerc have become prolific on social media, interacting with their fans and showing off their personalities online. Thus far Schumacher has, either by accident or design, generally engaged in a limited or corporate way, which could be construed as shyness or that he is perhaps being overprotected. Many fans still want to know just who Mick Schumacher is, beyond being Michael’s son. Still, this presents an opportunity for Ferrari and Haas to build that interest into popularity by letting Schumacher find his voice – and Haas desperately needs some good driver PR after Mazepin’s off-track conduct caused a stink on social media.
2021 will be a learning year for Schumacher, and one in which it will be difficult to emulate the impact Leclerc made, securing a graduation to Ferrari after just a single season. But the Scuderia’s F1 chief, Mattia Binotto, is conscious of the difference between the two.
“Compared to Charles, Charles normally is very fast on the very first day,” says Binotto. “I think that Mick, the way he has developed himself, he is learning a lot in the first season and eventually even the start of the second. Then he becomes strong in the second half of the second season.
“That’s why I think two seasons will be important for him [in F1]. But already in the second [year], I’m expecting to see progress compared to the first one.”
Binotto’s comments ease the pressure on Schumacher for 2021, but it places a greater onus on how he fares in 2022. It’s already shaping up to be a make-or-break year.
If Schumacher can maintain his habit of building momentum and excelling in his second year, and if Haas regains its competitiveness to coincide with that, the timing could be perfect for Mick not only to prove himself to F1, but even to stake a claim to be a big part of Ferrari’s F1 future.
“IT’S MAINLY JUST UNDERSTANDING YOUR GOALS, AND SETTING YOUR GOALS ACCORDINGLY TO WHAT YOU THINK IS POSSIBLE”