How Mick Schumacher is making his own F1 name

The upcoming Belgian Grand Prix is going to be very special for several Formula 1 drivers.

Alpine’s Esteban Ocon will enter the paddock as a grand prix winner for the first time, while Lewis Hamilton will again arrive at a race track on the precipice of a remarkable statistical milestone, his 100th F1 win beckoning. The Mercedes driver’s title rival, Max Verstappen, meanwhile, will be starting a run on familiar ground where he can expect huge local support.

But there’s one driver who won’t be returning from the summer break reflecting on victories past or those still to be claimed. The race at Spa means something very different to Mick Schumacher.

This week's event will be the Haas driver’s first in F1 at the venue where, 30 years ago, his father made his famous championship bow for Jordan as a 22-year-old rookie, the same age Mick is now.

“Very little!” Schumacher quickly replies when asked how often he is questioned about his rookie season being the 30th anniversary of his father’s debut. We’re speaking three days ahead of last month’s British GP, so we suspect questions on that theme might be heading Mick’s way quite a bit more in the coming days, as F1 paddock personnel reconvene for the first of 12 planned races to close out his first year in the championship.

“I actually knew the moment that I signed [for Haas] that it will be 30 years,” Schumacher says. “And it’s actually crazy to think that he started exactly the same age that I am now. Obviously, it’s a different time in this world. But still the nostalgia is there and I’m very happy about it.”

Mick Schumacher will contest his first Belgian GP this weekend, 30 years on from his father's debut

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

F1 has, of course, changed massively in the three decades since 1991. Back then, in-season testing meant year-round experience-gathering in competition cars was possible, while the allowances for spare chassis and engines meant teams travelled in a very different way to how they do today. Now, the heavily restricted rules governing in-season preparation and development mean cars are more reliable than ever, but F1 pilots spend correspondingly much less time in their cockpits.

Ahead of his F1 race debut in Bahrain this year, Schumacher had just one-and-a-half days in the Haas VF-21, although his Ferrari link, which is still retained, meant he could sample Maranello’s older machines for additional pre-season preparation. That went alongside the practice and test outings he completed for Haas in 2020, after a testing day each with Ferrari and Alfa Romeo the year before.

“A comparison is very difficult to talk about right now – to compare 1991 and now,” he explains on the subject of how F1 has changed since his family name first appeared in the championship. “But still, if you think how quick these cars are today, the gaps are not as big as they were maybe in the past. So yeah, it’s a very difficult question to answer. But it’s still fun that it’s 30 years exactly. On the day at Spa, it’s going to be great and emotional racing.”

"We have to work harder to get lap time out of the car. We have to push more; we have to be more on the edge. And the thing is with these cars, the limit, and being on the limit, is very small" Mick Schumacher

When the F1 circus arrives in force in Belgium, it will reunite in line with the necessary protocols in place to allow the event to operate during the pandemic. These arrangements and the travel difficulties that accompany them have added an additional level of difficulty for F1 rookies, and also mean we’re speaking to Schumacher outside and alongside the Haas motorhome in the Silverstone paddock – actually just past the bins.

Here we find him energetic and charming, clearly relaxed and revelling in his place in motorsport’s top tier. And that’s also factoring in Haas’s poor position – it has the slowest car by a big margin (+3.085 seconds on average in Autosport’s supertimes calculations) behind pacesetter Red Bull.

Mick has already driven F1 machinery at Spa: his father’s 1994-championship-winning Benetton B194 in a demo run ahead of the 2017 Belgian GP. But the VF-21 will get nowhere near that machine’s pedigree or achievements, nor match the beauty of the Jordan 191 his father qualified seventh in 1991 and which Mick drove after this year’s British GP.

The VF-21 is so far off the 2021 pace for a specific reason: Haas is sacrificing any in-season development this year – team boss Guenther Steiner says it would be a “pointless” effort to maybe get on terms with Williams and Alfa – in order to use its resources for an attempted far bigger step with the 2022 rules reset.

Haas isn't developing its 2021 car, leaving Schumacher with a car that is tough to drive

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Haas is not alone in having big ambitions tied to the delayed regulation change, but its decision not to add any aerodynamic updates since round two at Imola (these were minor parts that weren’t ready in time for the season opener, after introducing small pieces of updated rear bodywork in line with the altered floor rules, plus nose and front-wing design tweaks, during testing) and choosing not to use its allotted tokens for development on the carryover cars from 2020 places it alone.

PLUS: Why F1’s worst car isn’t inhibiting ‘smart’ Schumacher

The result, in unison with the dearth of pace, is a package that is lacking on downforce, particularly at the rear. The VF-21 is therefore a difficult beast to tame, as evidenced by both Schumacher and team-mate Nikita Mazepin having embarrassing offs in the season opener (Mazepin ended his F1 debut after just two corners). But how does that feel behind the wheel?

“You can imagine it so that basically it seems we have to work harder to get lap time out of the car,” explains Schumacher. “We have to push more; we have to be more on the edge. And the thing is with these cars, the limit, and being on the limit, is very small. If you’re over it, you will lose it very quickly. And if you’re under it, you’ll be very slow. So, it’s about finding that right margin.

“It seems like the biggest teams have a bigger margin in between so they have more room to play. But we knew that it was going to be a tough year for us. More so looking ahead to 2022, and that’s where we really will be able to ‘pick the cherries’, I think you say? Hopefully that will be the case, and hopefully we’ll do enough to consistently be able to fight in the points [next year].”

A crash in Bahrain caused a safety-car period, with Schumacher spinning at the restart before getting his car pointing the right way again and having a lonely race to finish his first grand prix. But he at least started a trend that still holds of outqualifying Mazepin (in sessions they both enter), and he is yet to retire from a race.

At Imola, he made another poor mistake with a spin under the safety car that wiped off his front wing during the wet early laps, but he managed to recover to ‘win’ the intra-Haas scrap at the rear of the field.

Then came what Schumacher picks as his best race so far in 2021: Portugal. “That was also the one where we applied the most pressure onto Nicholas [Latifi], who eventually made a mistake, and we got to get past him [Schumacher came home 17th, one spot and 3.0s ahead of the Williams].”

Schumacher regards his ultimately successful pursuit of Latifi in Portugal as his best race to date

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The following Spanish GP was another high point, mainly for Schumacher becoming the first Haas driver in 2021 to outqualify a rival – Latifi again – on merit. But the following event in Monaco returned the rookie to a tough and expensive place, as his FP3 crash meant he missed qualifying and did up to £500,000 worth of damage according to Haas’s estimations.

But he had just set a time good enough for 14th place in practice, and he immediately muscled past Mazepin at the start of the race, where a fuel pick-up problem meant Schumacher was later ordered to let his team-mate back ahead.

The Azerbaijan chaos provided Haas with its best finishes of the season so far, until that was trumped by the drama in Hungary just before the summer break, and Schumacher took the team’s best results in each case (13th in Azerbaijan, 12th in Hungary, albeit Mazepin was extremely unfortunate to be taken out in a pitlane crash not of his making in the latter).

But while Schumacher showed enormous willing and daring in battling Verstappen’s hobbled Red Bull hard during the early stages at the Hungaroring following the red flag, he had again missed qualifying due to an FP3 crash – caught out by a gust of wind on tyres already crying enough in the high heat. Since this followed a Paul Ricard shunt, which actually sealed Schumacher’s best qualifying result so far in F1 – 15th and a Q2 berth he never used – Steiner said such crashes were becoming “too frequent and too heavy”.

"Mostly I feel very comfortable in the environment that I’m in, which obviously allows me to work freely – to work the way I usually do. And I think that also kind of represents our results sometimes" Mick Schumacher

“I think it’s going quite OK,” Schumacher says of his rookie campaign so far, which also includes flashes of strong pace en route to beating Mazepin in both Austrian races; a tough time in the tyre management race at Silverstone, where the Russian finished just ahead; and several clashes with his team-mate, such as their near-plane crash coming-together at the finish in Baku.

“I’m still very comfortable in the car, which is great. But also mostly I feel very comfortable in the environment that I’m in, which obviously allows me to work freely – to work the way I usually do. And I think that also kind of represents our results sometimes. Obviously, we know where we are, so with a bit of luck, and with a bit of smart tactics, I think we’ve always managed get a bit ahead and outperform the car, which is very positive in our first year.”

Steiner has been very open about 2021 being a year where both his drivers must concentrate on adapting to life in F1 and finding the required limit after graduating from Formula 2. After all, the unique nature of the current campaign – Haas may not be developing its car, but its rivals are also limited in this – essentially makes it a learning year to get up to speed before the rules reset. Even so, those crashes and clashes are extra-tricky to navigate in F1’s new cost-cap era…

Rookie driver lineup of Mazepin and Schumacher have lots to learn

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“There are not a lot of negatives,” Steiner says of his team’s start to 2021. “But if there are negatives, they need to be brought up as well. We cannot just live [saying], ‘Oh, everything is good’ until it’s really bad. This is very competitive. And if you’re not honest about things, you will never be successful.”

This perhaps explains Steiner’s comments in the aftermath of Schumacher’s crash in Hungary, where Williams scooped up enough points that the 2021 ‘Class C’ finishing order is in all likelihood now set for the remainder of the year. But the Haas boss also knows his young charges are dealing with a season like no other.

At the Styrian GP, Schumacher spoke of sitting “crooked” in the VF-21’s cockpit since the season’s start. This is actually because of his body shape and how he fits into the seat Haas initially produced – something he’s also dealt with on his way up the junior ladder.

The team made an altered seat in time for the Hungarian GP, but this was only possible because the event followed Silverstone, so there was enough time for Schumacher to visit Haas’s Banbury base around the race weekend. Such trips have “definitely” been rarer than he would otherwise have liked thanks to the current travel restrictions.

“I would be there at least every two weeks, if not every week,” he explains. “Obviously, it’s a shame that we have to do everything on track [to gel as a team]. But, nonetheless, I feel that the work that we’ve done together, and also the communication and the feeling in the team, is very good. That makes me very happy, but also shows me the potential that we have. And also looking maybe towards next year, weeks and months ahead.”

On the subject of 2022, Schumacher regularly references the building work he and Haas are undergoing that he hopes will bear fruit with the new-car package next year. But he admits “nothing is signed” for 2022, with his Ferrari contract meaning a three-way agreement is needed. In all likelihood, however, Schumacher and Mazepin will continue their scrap next season (Steiner said after Silverstone that “there need to be a few t’s crossed and a few i’s dotted, and then we will get there” on a confirmed deal).

The all-Haas battle at the back is one that the reigning F2 champion is so far winning 9-2 in qualifying, and in championship places (19-20). There have been other awkward moments, such as their near-collision while battling in France, and Mazepin has been making steady progress to close a gap that was regularly significant during the early races.

Schumacher has generally had the upper hand in battles with his team-mate this year

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“In general you always want to beat your team-mate – I think that’s number one priority in the sport,” Schumacher replies when asked about his battle with Mazepin, and the difficulty of an all-rookie line-up meaning no benchmark comparison.

“For me, very early on in the season, I was putting myself into a position where I had different targets [apart from Mazepin]. So, if it was the beginning, maybe [that was] Nicholas, and it got to ‘I now measure myself maybe with George [Russell]’, trying to match his pace. And I think that’s really what has been giving me the opportunity to move ahead and also try and grow. Obviously, we are two rookies, but still we’re able to learn from each other. And hopefully, we’ll be able to next year fight with the guys in the top.

"With the championships that I’ve won I showed that I have the potential to merit my way to Formula 1. And I think if I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t want to be in Formula 1, because I wouldn’t deserve it" Mick Schumacher

“The satisfaction is basically that we’re able to – even with a more difficult car, or maybe a car that isn’t as developed – at times fight with Williams. And I think that’s really what’s motivating me. And that’s also why I come in at work early and leave late, so I know that I’ve done everything possible to be able to allow us to be as close as we can.”

Schumacher is inevitably realistic when it comes to the goals all that effort is leading towards over the rest of 2021. Races like Hungary come about pretty rarely during an F1 season, with the similarly shambolic Baku event demonstrating how many big- hitters need to be impacted for the smaller squads to score.

“I think that if we see at the end of the season that we’re – maybe not consistently – closer to Q2 in qualifying and closer to points, that will be a success for us,” Schumacher says. “Obviously, an amazing bonus would be to get points. But, again, it wouldn’t be a huge drama if we didn’t collect points, because we knew that it was going to be difficult this year.”

In terms of overall career goals, Schumacher’s answer is again inevitable – to become a world champion – but his phrasing reveals something about his likeable personality: “I probably wouldn’t be a Formula 1 driver if I wouldn’t say I want to achieve the world championship. Obviously that’s the goal, that’s the dream,” he adds. “When? I can’t say…”

If Schumacher can reach such a point, he and Michael would become F1’s third father-son world champion duo – after Graham and Damon Hill, and Keke and Nico Rosberg. But Michael’s achievements alone trump the combined totals of those others. That’s why there’s so much intrigue as to how his son will fare in a championship where Michael wrote a legend unmatched, until Hamilton – his Mercedes replacement – began racking up titles and wins.

Schumacher wants to win titles like his father, and his father's replacement at Mercedes

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

But Mick does not “feel any pressure whatsoever in terms of my surname”. That’s despite the fact it has inevitably added scrutiny of his results by observers unwilling to dig deeper – as it did during his rise up the junior ranks. Of that time, those who knew Schumacher during his successful run from starting out in Formula 4 in 2015 through to securing the European Formula 3 crown in 2018 to his F2 days, wonder how much he missed with the sad absence of his father to offer his enormous racing experience at crucial moments and likely aid his progression further.

We put this to Mick towards the end of our interview, and his answer reinforces the picture his words have built around F1’s latest new driver with a famous surname. That Mick Schumacher is fresh and engaging, that he’s going to do things his way while at the same time making use of every opportunity he can (such as his friendship with Sebastian Vettel, which led to the crooked seat revelation in the aftermath of their parc ferme inspection of the Haas in France).

But also that this new young star, who has impressed his team so far with his openness and flexibility on car set-up approaches, is forging his own story. One that, no matter how it ends or the heights it reaches, will sit alongside his father’s and not underneath it.

“I mean, I think that with the championships that I’ve won I showed that I have the potential to merit my way to Formula 1,” he concludes. “I think that’s really what’s key.

“And I think if I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t want to be in Formula 1, because I wouldn’t deserve it. That was key for me, that I also proved it to myself that I’m able to win championships and that I’m capable of winning with the same material as everybody else.”

Schumacher caught the eye with his spirited defensive driving in Hungary

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images