“Everything went according to plan,” says Haas team boss Günther Steiner about the 2022 French Grand Prix in Le Castellet. But then there was a safety car phase and the race strategy of Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher was gone. In the end, the team remained without points, only Schumacher came to the finish – and only in the penultimate position.
It was just “one of those weekends,” says Steiner. The bottom line was that Haas was “disappointing” on the Paul Ricard circuit. One can only take away: “The car is fast.”
But why didn’t Haas translate it into championship points? Both drivers started the race with handicaps: Magnussen was only from P20 on the grid due to an engine penalty, Schumacher from P17 after violating a track limit in qualifying.
The start of the race is actually going well…
“In the meantime we were P12 and P14, which is not bad when you [von so weit hinten] starts,” says Steiner. However, the caution phase did not allow Haas’ plans to work out: After the early stops on laps eight and nine, which had become necessary due to high tire wear, both drivers turned back into the pits again on lap 18.
“We actually wanted to do 15 laps longer, but when the safety car comes, what can you do? If you stay out, that’s it for you. If you change the tires, that’s it for you too. Because we knew we could do it Don’t maintain your performance to the end,” explains Steiner, adding: “Everyone else just had a free stop.”
This put the Haas drivers at the bottom of the race. And a little later, Schumacher was sent into a spin by Guanyu Zhou from the Alfa Romeo. Schumacher himself describes this scene as “unnecessary because he seemed to have had a problem”. Again the German lost time and caught up with the drivers in front of him.
Schumacher speaks of a “lonely” race
“Then we went out alone for a while, it was pretty lonely,” he says. “We would have had the pace to keep up with the field, somewhere around P10. If we had started from around P10 we could probably have kept that. But from where we were it was difficult to move up front because the tires were pretty at the limit.”
“Points,” says Schumacher on “Sky”, “were probably not in prospect anyway.” The Haas team had already made too many missteps for that.
“It just didn’t go as planned,” says Schumacher. “We had already figured that it would be difficult, but not that difficult. As I said: I think if we had started a little further up the field, it might have been enough.”
Track limit violation as the origin of the Schumacher problems
Schumacher takes the track limit violation in qualifying seriously, even if he doesn’t say it openly, but put it this way: “In principle, everything started with the canceled lap. That changed the whole approach to the race and probably changed us also cost points.”
Because the fact that Schumacher was so far behind in the field from the start was a “huge problem”, explains former Formula 1 race winner Ralf Schumacher on “Sky”. You are then “not in this fight, […] then hangs somewhere in the vegetables when you start. Of course that was a big disadvantage.”
However, his nephew had a harder time in Le Castellet compared to teammate Magnussen, especially on Friday. “It is difficult to estimate whether the engine change [bei Magnussen] didn’t help a bit. But Mick definitely has to go and take a closer look at the data. That’s another learning curve.”
No reproach from team boss Steiner
Team boss Steiner doesn’t blame his driver here: “It probably just took him a little longer to get used to the track and to get a feel for it. That can happen. Sometimes you need longer. But his pace in the race was okay. There nothing was wrong.”
However, the Haas VF-22 in France “contrary to expectations was not quite as good,” says Ralf Schumacher. Mick Schumacher thinks similarly and says: “We weren’t quite as quick here as at the Red Bull Ring. I’m not quite sure why.”
He only hopes things will improve again in a week in Budapest: “My feeling is that we should be in shape again there. It’s a track that should normally suit the car quite well.”
And the car will then receive its first major update this year, with Haas being the last team to use new parts. But only Magnussen gets the expansion stage, Schumacher still has to do without: According to Steiner, only one set of parts is available before the Formula 1 summer break.