Inside Mick Schumacher's first F1 test

Mick Schumacher's tempestuous arrival in Formula 1 was greeted by a storm: a Bahraini sandstorm, of the sort that reduced visibility to similar levels as freezing fog - sprinkling cars and people with a fine yet persistent layer of grit that tasted vaguely of wet cement.
That was on the Monday before what was arguably the most anticipated F1 debut of recent years, and while the dust had settled by Tuesday morning, it remained as an insidiously slippery coating on the Sakhir track's surface.

Besides, another storm was brewing. This time, thick black clouds pregnant with rain that would soon cascade over the circuit, bringing proceedings to an unexpected halt.
So the circumstances were, to put it mildly, fraught. Yet against the desert landscape, in the eye of the storm, Mick Schumacher was an oasis of calm - despite the intense scrutiny that followed his every move.

Schumacher Junior making his Ferrari debut would have been an emotionally charged event on any occasion, but of course there was the elephant in the room: an appropriate metaphor because the legacy of his seven-time champion father at the Scuderia is truly gigantic.

Nobody really dared to ask him about Michael - the enormity of the question was too great, the sensitivity of the situation off-limits - although everyone, of course, was thinking of Michael. Probably nobody more than Mick himself.

The striking physical resemblance is one thing - although Michael was six years older than Mick is now when he first drove a Ferrari (with two F1 titles already behind him). Complete with the omnipresent Sabine Kehm, the Schumachers' loyal agent, at Mick's side, the tableau at Bahrain could easily have been 20 years ago. But it's also the way that Mick speaks like Michael, moves like Michael. The supremely rational, compact, answers to questions, with a touch of humour and a half smile that manage to stop them from being abrupt.

When Mick emerged from the Ferrari motorhome just before 9am wearing red overalls for the first time, there was almost an audible intake of breath. It felt a bit like seeing a ghost. But mostly the atmosphere was one of excitement, like opening the first page of a novel you've been desperate to read for a long while.

Whether it was because of the impending bad weather or just his eagerness to get going, Mick was rolling down the pitlane shortly after the track went green: no doubt much to his relief, as it meant that he could finally stop feeling like a goldfish in a bowl and get on with what he had come to Bahrain to do.

It says a lot about the weight of expectation on his shoulders that when the first times came in, showing Mick towards the bottom of the screens, some people were actually surprised and disappointed. Lewis Hamilton was one of the drivers on track that day for Mercedes, yet Mick was somehow meant to beat him within his first hour in a Formula 1 car.

It took him a few more hours, but he did it. In fact Mick was on course to end the day fastest of all, before Max Verstappen ruined the headlines by going quicker in the closing minutes. On his first day of F1, Mick ended up second (albeit on tyres two steps softer than those of Verstappen).

Yes, of course it's just testing so times mean nothing - and it was an odd day with effectively a three-hour stoppage due to the rain. But everyone agreed it was an impressive debut.

As for Mick himself, he typically took it in his stride. "The emotions I can tell you were really nice," he reported. "It was feeling like home already; it was beautiful to make those first laps and to see all those guys working on the car and working with me. I felt very comfortable."

It was somewhat different to the scene 23 years ago, when Michael first drove a Ferrari on November 16 1995 at Fiorano. On that occasion, Michael was in plain white overalls, away from the glare of publicity, driving a cobbled-together 412T2 fitted with the new V10 engine. He managed only 20 laps.

Mick did 56 in a car that had just shown the pace to dominate the preceding weekend's race, his every move tracked by a posse of media. Again, that didn't really bother him. "I was just concentrated on the job that I had to do and I tried to enjoy the day," said Mick afterwards. "No problem." And was he surprised by the times he set? "To be honest, no."

His run in the Ferrari-engined Alfa Romeo the day after was almost an anti-climax. He completed another 70 laps, going slightly slower on the same tyre - which you would probably expect, given the performance differential between the two cars. But with the usual testing caveats - and the fact that track conditions during the two days were very different - there's potential for an interesting conclusion there too.

Mick said his final Ferrari runs were about exploring performance, and the day in the Alfa put into place what he had learned the day before. But with a driver so new to F1, it would be reasonable to expect the biggest early improvements to come from the driver rather than the car. The fact Mick wasn't able to improve on day two might suggest it took him very little time to reach his own limits and those of the cars - at least for now.

So for Michael's son, Formula 1 is a question of when, not if. Maybe even as soon as 2020. "Obviously it's my first year in Formula 2, so let's see how it goes," he concluded. "I want to arrive in Formula 1 being a complete racing driver, as prepared as possible, and time will tell if that's next year or the following years. I'm taking everything one step a time."

In Bahrain, this involved making his F2 debut and F1 debut - with two different teams. It may be one step at a time, but those small steps can be measured with Neil Armstrong's ruler.