The pressure on Mick Schumacher in Formula 1 is increasing. The Haas driver simply crashed too often in the 2022 season, and rumors have long been circulating that the racing team is already looking for a successor. Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff now demonstratively backed the 23-year-old in the RTL interview and even confessed that he also had the son of F1 legend Michael Schumacher on his team’s list.
Before the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Haas team boss Günther Steiner once again made it clear that Mick Schumacher must not allow himself an accident again. “We hope that we won’t have any damage in Baku,” said Steiner, also with a view to the following race in Canada: “We only have a few days to set ourselves up there. So if you have damage to the car, it will even more difficult.”
Statements like these increase the pressure that is already on Schumacher’s shoulders. So far, the youngster hasn’t been able to score a single World Championship point. Steiner’s colleague Wolff is meanwhile extremely critical of the pressure situation. “Mick can drive a car, is intelligent. You just have to let him drive now,” said the Mercedes team boss in an interview with RTL (the entire interview runs as a video in the picture above).
Instead of drumming into the Haas driver that he shouldn’t make any more mistakes, Wolff would advise “the opposite” and simply “let Schumacher off the hook”.
Schumacher is still in the training phase, “you have to trust him,” added the Austrian.
Wolff: Mercedes has Schumacher “always on the radar”
In the currently decisive phase of his career, Schumacher has to concentrate entirely on his work in the cockpit and with his engineers – and not let anything else get to him: “I don’t read on the Internet and don’t listen to heckling, but do my thing,” he said Advice from Wolff to the F1 driver.
The 50-year-old was also convinced that Mick “can go a long way”. Would Schumacher even be someone who could sit in a Mercedes car in the future? “Why not?” asked Toto Wolff, who at the same time referred to his own junior drivers.
At the same time, the Mercedes boss added: “But: Mick, with or without the name Schumacher, with his strengths is someone who will always be on our radar.”