For a few weeks now, Mick Schumacher has been proving with strong performances that he belongs in Formula 1. At the beginning of this process were his first World Championship points at Silverstone and Spielberg, which gave him self-confidence; In Spielberg in particular, there are said to have been tensions behind the scenes of the Haas team.
Flashback: In the F1 sprint on Saturday, Schumacher finished 8th behind his teammate Kevin Magnussen before Lewis Hamilton came up from behind and put the pressure on. Schumacher felt he was faster than Magnussen and requested a place swap.
But the command post refused, and when Magnussen took the opportunity to shake him off the DRS because Schumacher was busy with Hamilton, the house blessing in the briefing after the race is said to have gone wrong.
It’s the other side of Mick Schumacher that you rarely see in interviews; that of the self-confident young man, whose tone can sometimes become sharper if he feels he has been treated unfairly.
How does the race engineer see what happened in Austria?
The Austrian Grand Prix was “a good example of this,” says Ayao Komatsu, the Haas team’s senior race engineer, in an interview with Motorsport-Total.com. “Mick was behind Kevin and that frustrated him. His focus in this sprint race wasn’t the right one. We talked about that afterwards.”
What Komatsu means by that: “We talked before the sprint race about how we’re going to do it as a team. But what he did after that wasn’t great. And what he said after that wasn’t great either.”
Schumacher said on Saturday evening in Spielberg that he “actually hoped that Kevin would drop back” in order to be able to use Magnussen’s DRS as an advantage in the duel against Hamilton. He was also “quite a bit faster” than the Dane. And: “I think that’s something to discuss.”
Schumacher can do things differently if he wants to…
While he expressed himself very diplomatically in front of the TV cameras, as he was allegedly taught in media training by his manager Sabine Kehm, sources from the Haas team report that Schumacher is said to have appeared more confident and direct behind the scenes.
Komatsu understands that: “He’s a young driver and he wants to be the best. He wants to beat everyone else. That’s fine, because that’s what a young racer has to be like. On the other hand, you have to see the bigger picture. What’s the position of the team as a whole, what is my position? Even a tiny rethink can make a big difference.”
“We spoke openly about it after the sprint on Saturday, again on Sunday morning before the race, again after the race, and again on Tuesday after the race. We have good, open communication. To be honest, Spielberg was tough. The result was correct, but we learned a lot there,” explains Komatsu.
Was Spielberg important for Schumacher’s personal development?
Spielberg was a “bumpy road” in the relationship between the Haas team and Schumacher, so it was a rather bumpy weekend. “But I explained that to him: ‘Mick, come on, you’re doing well. Focus on your own performance and not on this thing!’ And then it was fine again,” Komatsu recalls.
“Sometimes Mick focuses too much on his team-mate. Then I say to him: ‘Look, Kevin really likes to help you and he tells you things that he would never have told Romain (Grosjean; editor’s note) before .’ And then Mick thinks and realizes that the most important thing for the team is to get up in the Constructors’ Championship.”
“It’s very good for Mick to have an established team-mate like Kevin. We didn’t know beforehand how good he is. Then Kevin came along and that gave us a reference. We think that with our 2021 car we’ll be safe against Williams could have fought if we had had Kevin back then. Mick would have benefited from that in his development.”
“Like day and night”: Magnussen has grown up
Because: “Kevin’s attitude and his mental state is like day and night different than two years ago. He has returned much more mature after this year’s break. It’s really a pleasure to work with him. And he doesn’t even concentrate on to beat his team-mate, but he always thinks about the team,” praises Komatsu.
At the same time he says: “Five years ago Kevin would have been exactly the same as Mick is today. Young drivers always want to beat their teammates first. Of course Kevin also wants to beat Mick, but it’s not his first focus. He’s over it. Mick has just less experience. So that shouldn’t be a criticism of him at all.”
In one point, Komatsu’s image of Schumacher coincides with that of many experts: “He’s constantly learning. He’s not slow – but above all he’s constantly learning. If he puts the right focus and stays mentally strong, then he will make a good path. And he will learn from his team-mates. Because he’s really good at learning.”