Mick Schumacher is betting that the step backwards to being a test driver will result in a comeback as a regular driver in Formula 1. Alpha Tauri team boss Franz Tost gives an insight that he would have liked to get the German – while Haas boss Günther Steiner sees his ex-employee in “a good position”.
If Mick Schumacher has his way, being hired as a reserve driver at Mercedes is just an intermediate step on the way to the greatest possible success. In all likelihood, he will be at the track for all 23 races of the 2023 Formula 1 season. But it should be the exception that the 23-year-old actually climbs into the W14, with which the Silver Arrows want to constantly fight for victories and thus for the world championship title after a messed up year. Schumacher also assumes “that I’m able to become world champion if I’m in the right car at the right time”.
What sounds like an inconspicuous subordinate clause is one of the elementary conditions for being successful in Formula 1. Sitting in the right car at the right time. Schumacher said this sentence in an interview with the English-speaking motorsport platform “The Race” – and according to “Auto Bild”, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff was recently open to letting the newcomer go again with the right offer. Nyck de Vries could serve as a role model, who in 2022 was the third Mercedes driver to help out at Williams for a short time and was therefore able to recommend himself for the regular cockpit at Scuderia Alpha Tauri.
Apparently Mick Schumacher was one of the candidates for this car. At least team boss Franz Tost indicates serious considerations in this direction in an interview with RTL / ntv. “He was an issue for me personally,” says the Austrian, who has headed the former Toro Rosso racing team since 2006: “I would actually have liked to have had Mick in the car.” Finally, Tost is “convinced that Mick is talented and that he also has what it takes to drive successfully in Formula 1.”
Schumacher must use Friday chances
The former racing driver and Austrian Formula Ford Champion of 1983 is only vague about the reasons why the mind games didn’t become more. “But then there were other circumstances,” says Tost, “political reasons” because Schumacher was just a “Ferrari Junior”. The Scuderia from Maranello had sponsored Schumacher for several years, supported him on his way through the junior classes and ultimately played a key role in accommodating him with Haas for the 2021 season. A change to Alpha Tauri, into the Red Bull universe, would therefore have required Ferrari’s approval. “Then there was never an obligation,” Tost continued on RTL / ntv: “But personally I think a lot of him.”
Meanwhile, Tost sees the apparent step backwards from regular driver at Haas to test driver at Haas “already at Mercedes” as an opportunity for the ambitious German driver, “because it’s a very, very good team, one of the best in Formula 1, so of course he can learn a great deal” and “hopefully have the opportunity to take the Silver Arrow out onto the track several times, for example at Friday practice sessions instead of regular drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. According to Tost, that would give Schumacher “self-confidence”, further increase his “technical understanding” and “hopefully bring him back to the starting field at some point”.
Günther Steiner, team boss at Haas, who let Schumacher’s contract expire and instead relies on the much more experienced Nico Hülkenberg, had previously expressed a similarly benevolent attitude in an interview with ntv/RTL. “I think he’s in a good position at Mercedes,” said the pugnacious South Tyrolean, who publicly criticized and counted Schumacher several times last season before announcing the split. With the new role, he has “put himself in a good position with a team where he has the best opportunities for a regular cockpit in the future”.
Especially since the memory is still fresh, “how things went with Nyck de Vries,” Steiner continued. The Dutchman had won the Formula 2 title in 2019 and now, after detours via the Mercedes Formula E program and assignments in the Silver simulator and as a Friday driver, he still made it into Formula 1. A goal that Mick Schumacher is also pursuing.