The Formula 1 marriage between Team Haas and Mick Schumacher ended in a small war of roses in 2022. Team boss Günther Steiner complained bitterly several times about the young German driver, who had to leave at the end of the season. One reason was the youngster’s accidents, which cost the racing team a small fortune.
If you want to know what happened behind the scenes at Team Haas in the 2022 Formula 1 season, the Netflix series “Drive To Survive” gives a very detailed impression.
If you want to find out more details, you will soon have the chance to do so. At the end of April the book “Surviving to Drive” will appear on the German market. It is also about the past year of the US team. The author is none other than Haas team boss Günther Steiner.
Mick Schumacher will also play a major role in the South Tyrolean’s book, as reported by the “Times”, which was allowed to view the work before it was published. Steiner calculates that the German cost the team a total of two million US dollars due to his accidents in the 2022 season alone.
Steiner was particularly angry about Schumacher’s accident in Suzuka. In a wet practice session, the German crashed his car into the wall on the way to the pits, costing him $700,000 in repairs.
“It happened on the f***ing in-lap. On the in-lap!” Steiner writes about the said scene. “Of course it was very wet on the track, but nobody else managed to lose a car on the way back to the pits. We lost a car after five minutes and had to build a new one.”
The South Tyrolean continued: “I can’t have a driver that I don’t trust to drive a car safely through a slow lap. That’s ridiculous. How many people could we have hired for $ 700,000? And now I have to have the money find somewhere.”
The Suzuka incident was just one of many after which Steiner and Schumacher clashed. In the end, things got too colorful for the South Tyrolean and owner Gene Haas. After two years they ended the cooperation and signed Nico Hülkenberg as his successor.