Monza as a good omen?
Schumacher collects arguments for Formula 1 comeback
8/31/2023, 9:35 p.m
He’s in Formula 1, but he’s not allowed to drive. Mick Schumacher is stuck in the role of reserve pilot. In the meantime, the 24-year-old is even thinking about what will happen if his great career fails. But it’s not that far yet.
In the hot application phase for the long-awaited return to the Formula 1 cockpit, Mick Schumacher also relies on another pro argument. “If I go to a team as a regular driver, I now know exactly where to start to develop the car,” he said. But the 24-year-old also knows: “It doesn’t matter what phase of life you are in, you can never be sure that it will work out the way you imagine it.”
Schumacher seems balanced, determined, but anything but desperate. Recently he even gave unusual insights into his private life, he published photos of a visibly happy Mick Schumacher on Instagram alongside a Danish model. “I’m not the only one doing this and I won’t be the last. In the end, I felt good about sharing it,” he said. You always want support. “Of course I get it from my family and now also from another side. I think that then you can simply concentrate more and better on your work, that you can also make the better decisions.”
Williams as the most promising employer
He will have to make the right decisions for his career. It’s a tough race to return, one with no further experience in the race cockpit. On the Thursday before the Formula 1 classic in Italy, his employer Mercedes also announced that the two regular drivers, record world champion Lewis Hamilton and his British compatriot George Russell, had extended their contracts up to and including 2025. A silver arrow will not be free soon.
Since leaving after two – rather difficult – years with the American Haas team, the son of record world champion Michael Schumacher has only been able to play as a substitute. But this at least at the former industry leader Mercedes. “I think he deserves to be on the starting line-up,” said his team boss Toto Wolff about Mick Schumacher.
only where? Williams is traded again and again. The American rookie Logan Sargeant has not yet been able to convince there. One of the big questions remains whether the American owners want to get rid of him after a year and replace him with Mick Schumacher – despite all the experience at Williams with German drivers like Nico Rosberg or Nick Heidfeld. There aren’t too many other options, instead other even younger drivers from the junior racing series are jostling.
“Of course you think about it, what do I do if it doesn’t work?” Mick Schumacher replied this time to a corresponding question. When he was at Haas, it sometimes sounded different, more like: He didn’t have a plan B.
Monza plays a big role
Under the leadership or guidance or simply in the environment of the former series world champion team Mercedes, he seems even more mature in a few months: “For me it is important that I continue to give everything. If it should be the case that it doesn’t work out , I have to think about what to do next.”
He also knows difficult phases in his career. The first year in Formula 3 was not easy, in the second he won the championship. The same thing happened in Formula 2 – and the place he now returns to as reserve driver at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza played a crucial and memorable role in that.
“It’s a place where I had the big turning point in Formula 2 when I got on the podium twice and was only 9 points behind the overall leader instead of 50,” he recalled. “And that was also a moment when I said: I just have to keep going like this and then it will work here in Formula 2 too.” Now it just has to work that way in Formula 1.