Formula 1 ends right next to the entrance to Team Haas. There is only one turnstile there that blocks access for unauthorized persons, and right behind it: the mountains. If you want to go to Haas, you have to walk the longest way, it is at the racetrack in Spielberg, so to speak, at the last address. Even the hardly bigger team from Alfa Romeo has a much more massive home, only with Haas you always have the feeling that the whole mess could be removed with a couple of forklifts if necessary.
People have now gotten used to the fact that the small Haas casket houses a special Formula 1 exhibit, the reporters no longer flock to him in droves as they did years ago in the Formula 2 junior series. Back then, when the attraction was brand new and still was not in Formula 1, journalists from Brazil, Mexico and Russia came to the tiny Prema team to indulge in a kind of facial tourism: look at the eye area and the chin! Just like dad.
You have to think about that when, after one and a half mostly contact-free corona years, a decent bunch of reporters finally gathers in front of the three simple red steps by Haas in Spielberg. And this time nobody came to stare at the record world champion’s son. You came to talk to racing driver Mick Schumacher about racing. And about what actually defines a racing driver in the meritocracy of Formula 1: overtaking manoeuvres! And championship points.
Racing team boss Steiner has publicly hanged his driver several times, sometimes rightly so
Mick Schumacher needed 31 races, and it took a year and a half before he was able to score his first four points with eighth place at Silverstone on Sunday. Five days later he also set the seventh best time in qualifying for the sprint race this Saturday in Spielberg. It’s finally working. His boss, the South Tyrolean Günther Steiner, had repeatedly demanded points from him. So does Schumacher feel some kind of salvation? Oh no, he says. He wouldn’t say “that’s why weight was taken off my shoulders” at all. Oh, really not? Schumacher smiles. He had come close to winning a point at least twice before, in Miami he rammed Sebastian Vettel, in Canada his engine failed.
He prefers to talk about Max Verstappen now. He actually dueled with the world champion at Silverstone. He was sitting in a damaged car that was difficult to steer – but still. Schumacher, who had started from 19th place, tried to overtake him shortly before the end of the race, just like the cheeky go-karts do. First he tried it around the outside in a corner, which is always dangerous because he can simply drift outwards on the inside track. Then he tried it inside, even pushing his front wheels past Verstappen’s rear axle. An important detail. Because if the regulations had been implemented, Verstappen should no longer have pushed him aside, argues Schumacher. “That would have been two World Cup points more for the team and me.”
The team and him. It’s been a tense story this season. At least between the team boss and him. Steiner publicly hung his driver several times, and Schumacher gave him at least a slight, internal criticism: he showed three crashes, in Saudi Arabia, Miami and Monaco. There were also spinners, once two in a Grand Prix. He had a car at his disposal in which his experienced teammate Kevin Magnussen had already appeared well ahead before the tenth race: the Dane finished ninth twice and fifth once. Schumacher’s best result before Silverstone: eleventh.
In the second year, Mick Schumacher always went up – in all junior classes
Schumacher’s contract with Haas expires at the end of the season. And the criticism of his team boss, which is irritating in its intensity, has not yet indicated that he can have great hopes of a subsequent job. What was particularly irritating was that Steiner couldn’t even understand the irritation he was causing with his publicly cracking lashes. Schumacher needs “someone to help him and not criticize him too much,” said even Bernie Ecclestone, adding: “If Michael (Mick’s father, ed.) Were here, he would show Günther where to go.” It is ironic that a team leader’s leadership style was criticized by an autocrat who recently called Vladimir Putin a “first-class personality”.
After the race in Monaco, in which Schumacher had an accident, Steiner left a lot of room for imagination with the sentence “We have to see how we can continue from here”. After Schumacher’s crash, he repeatedly referred to the costs incurred, and at the same time he kept up the pressure by saying that a young driver in Formula 1 doesn’t have forever before he finally scores. And when asked what an extension of the contract depends on, Steiner said: “It also depends on Ferrari.” It almost sounded as if a word of power from Maranello was Schumacher’s only chance for a future in Formula 1. The Italians have a cooperation with Haas, supply the engine and have a significant say in filling one of the two cockpits of the customer team.
When asked by SZ what the situation after Silverstone would look like, Steiner in Spielberg answered evasively. “Performance is everything in our sport,” he says. At the moment, no one would even think about contracts. “At Haas we always start dealing with it after the summer break. He just got his first points, now let’s see how it goes.” It’s about making the “best decision to move the team forward. So if we need more time to make a decision this time, then we’ll take it. Hopefully Mick will perform well, then he’ll stay.”
Schumacher has always shown this performance on his journey through the junior classes in the second year. It always took him a season to get used to the new cars. That’s how it was in Formula 4, Formula 3, Formula 2: And in Formula 1? It’s more complicated now. Because he made his debut in 2021 in a Haas that was more of a technical joke than a race car. It was a previous year’s model, deliberately not further developed in order to save costs and energy for the youngest model in the first year of the 2022 rule reform. On the track, Schumacher fought a private duel with teammate Nikita Masepin. Was it even possible to learn how to stand your ground in the battle for points?
“I think there were a lot of new things that I had to learn this year that I couldn’t learn last year,” explains Schumacher. But what is new is what is essential: duels in the race, changes in strategy or even moments when it is simply a matter of staying calm “and doing your job”.
There is a so-called “Walk of Legends” at the race track in Spielberg. Next to pictures of former world champions there is a button that, if you press it, starts to speak. At the touch of a button, Michael Schumacher tells the story of how diligent he used to be on the Fiorano track has tested. “What I did there, got people out of bed to drive into the dark until late at night. I always had this goal: I wanted to develop even better, even faster, because of course the others don’t stand still either .”
The father used to test his opponents thoroughly. It’s different with the son. Test drives have largely been abolished. He only has the race weekends to gain experience. There, every mistake is drilled on the largest possible stage. And in the end, others then decide whether Mick Schumacher’s time in Formula 1 will also end with Team Haas – or whether he can even move to one of the slightly fancier and better located motorhomes.
