Although he eventually became a member of Ferrari’s driving academy, he also flirted with Mercedes in the past. Mick Schumacher even tested on the “silver arrows” simulator back when he was racing karts.
The 23-year-old driver will act as a Mercedes reserve driver next year after his time at Haas. In a video shot by the German team, Schumacher also talked about how he visited Mercedes headquarters in Brackley back in 2014.
“A lot has changed since my last visit here in 2014. Back then it was a bit of a secret trip here to ride the simulator for the first time,” revealed the son of seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher.
“Since then the whole team has grown enormously and you can see why they are at the level they are at the moment. I’m happy to be a part of it, I’m looking forward to discovering everything here and getting to know everyone.”
Mick’s father raced for Mercedes from 2010 until the end of his career in the 2012 season. Two years later, his son worked in karting as a factory pilot for the Tony Kart brand, which had ties to Ferrari in F1. The relationship between Ferrari and the Schumacher name probably doesn’t even need to be mentioned. The legendary Michael won five championships with cars from Maranello.
Back then, eight years ago, Mercedes was just setting up its own young driver program and Mick Schumacher was still racing under his mother’s maiden name of Betsch to avoid much media attention.
However, in the 2014 season, he stopped going by the name “Mick Betsch” at races and started calling himself “Mick Junior” instead. And after the “renaming” he was very successful among the other juniors, as he won overall second place in the German, European and world go-kart championships.
He then approached Formula 1 for the first time in 2019, when he officially became a member of the Ferrari driving academy. A year later, Mick Schumacher became the F2 champion, and the rest of the story is familiar to all fans. Engagement with Haas, which came to an end this year together with membership in the Ferrari academy. Now Mick Schumacher opens another chapter with the name Mercedes and hopes that he is far from saying his last word in Formula 1.
