After a second high-profile, high-cost crash of 2022, this time at the recent Monaco Grand Prix, Mick Schumacher finds himself under more scrutiny than at any other time in his so far short Formula 1 career.
The reality of the situation was underlined by Haas team principal Guenther Steiner saying “It’s not very satisfactory having a big crash again. We need to see how we move forward from here” – in Haas’s own post-race press release, no less.
So, where does Schumacher go from here?
Former Jordan and Jaguar technical director Gary Anderson has been in similar situations before with F1 drivers.
From the latest episode of The Race F1 Podcast, here’s his take on Schumacher’s current plight, and what he needs to do to turn things around.
It’s definitely going from bad to worse. It’s one of those situations where his yardstick is his team-mate and Kevin Magnussen is doing a very, very strong job. There’s never a session that goes past where Kevin’s not able to be right in there, somewhere.
The end results haven’t been quite as good overall as what they probably should have been based on what the season has shown so far for the Haas team. And obviously Mick’s the one who’s had two major accidents.
I think he needs to settle down a little bit and get his confidence back because in Monaco, it was a difficult, difficult day – 10cm off line and you were struggling, to be honest. So that mistake, can you forgive him for it? Yes, you probably can, it was just a set of circumstances that were really, really tricky.
But he needs to maybe just back off a little bit and say to himself, ‘Right, for a couple of races I’m just going to get my confidence back here, let Kevin get on with it and I’ll do the best job I can, but I’m not going to dig too deeply’. Because at the end of the day, to finish first, first you’ve got to finish and he’s got to learn to do that a bit I think.
The pressure can get to you very easily as a young driver, so somebody needs to talk to him about it and I’m sure there will be many, many people talking to him about it.
That can be the biggest problem as well though, so he needs to have somebody that he has got confidence in to talk to him, and let him understand the situation a little bit because he’s got such a hype with a Ferrari opportunity potentially in the longer-term that he can’t have a day off, he can’t have a day of not doing a great job and just sort of trying to get himself back together again.
If I was advising him at the minute I’d say, ‘Right, I’ll put my arm around your shoulders, chap, but don’t worry about it – let’s just get on with doing the best job you can with confidence, and not take too many risks, and maybe you’ll get back to where you should be’.
But it will take time, I think, to recover from these accidents and the bad press that he’s getting.
