The sports commissioners of Le Mans 24 hours made their decision in the Mick Schumacher case-and thus gave the former Formula 1 driver a glimpse.
Although the alpine driver was guilty of having disregarded a yellow flag in qualifying, alpine #36 (Gounon/Makowiecki/Schumacher) remains tenth in the rating.
The sports commissioners-Jean-Francois Veroux, Michael Schwägerl, Yves Bacquelaine, Tomas Kunc, Faisal Al-Shaif and Chris Geefroy-deleted the son of the Formula 1 legend Michael Schumacher all the lap times that he had driven in qualifying until then.
However, Schumacher only drove his fastest lap of 3: 23,945 minutes, which secured tenth place and thus the qualification for the hyperpoles. This time sequence makes the punishment meaningless.
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Mick Schumacher ran into a yellow flag on his penultimate round, which was triggered by his team-mate Paul Loup Chatin in Alpine #35 (Chatin/Habsburg/Milesi). This had tire damage in the Porsche curves and stopped in the Maison Blanche curve when Schumacher arrived.
Mick Schumacher still sees work
After qualifying, Schumacher is not entirely satisfied.
Although he got a round, his personal best was 1.098 seconds slower than Alex Lynn’s best time in Cadillac #12 (Lynn/NATO/Stevens), which drove a new route record for hypercars on Circuit de la Sarthe in 3: 22.847 minutes.
Video: Here Mick Schumacher jumps out of the plane
“It was a little more difficult than expected,” admits the 26-year-old. “We are still satisfied with a tenth place under these circumstances, because I think we got the maximum out of our package in this case. But there is still work in front of us – luckily we still have a few free training sessions in which we can work on it.”
“We are already looking forward to the first hyperpole session, two training sessions are coming up beforehand. This gives us the opportunity to continue working on the racing and qualifying set-up. The team has done a great job to prepare everything-overall it was a bit tedious, but I think we’ll get the best out.”
When asked whether he has the feeling that he has the feeling that it goes in the right direction in retrospect and the first free training session, he remains careful:
“This will show up yet. At the moment it is very difficult to assess what the other teams do. We concentrate entirely on ourselves. It is always up and down anyway, especially in the changing conditions. So we have to wait and see what it looks like on Saturday – then I can give a better assessment.”
Mick Schumacher is not the only one punished
In addition to Schumacher’s Alpine, the Porsche #4 (NASR/Tandy/Wehrlein) and the Proton Porsche #99 (Jani/Pino/Varrone) also passed the same punishment. These punishments also remain with no real consequences. Felipe Nasr had also only driven its fastest time at the end and NEEL Jani was not qualified for pole position anyway.
For Aston Martin, whose both vehicles had just missed the hyperpoles, the last hope for a subsequent move -in burst. The Aston Martin #009 (Riberas/Sörensen/de Angelis) was barely scratched past the qualification as 16.
The Toyota #7 (Conway/Kobayashi/de Vries) remains outside as 17th and has to watch the hyperpole for the second time after 2024.