Why F1's chess master isn't worried by self-doubt

Mick Schumacher grabs a pair of pawns from the case, hides them behind his back, and a second later puts his two fists forward. GP Racing taps his left hand and he opens it… revealing a black piece nestling in his upturned palm. He gets to make the first move.

Mick’s interest in chess is no secret, as he’s often seen in the paddock playing against his physio. He’s got one of the world’s most popular chess apps installed on his phone but says he rarely plays against real people online, preferring computer bots. He also says it’s just a hobby, since a Formula 1 driver’s schedule leaves no room for proper chess study – but he definitely knows his way around the board.

Schumacher starts by pushing his pawn to d4, hinting he’ll play a London System opening – but then never moves his bishop to f4, developing both of his knights instead, as we begin to fight for the centre of the board…  

GP Racing: When did you start playing, Mick?

Mick Schumacher: We always had a chess board at home, and I always wanted to play, but was never good at it. So basically I just started playing around a bit more, spent more time with the game, I guess. Now it’s an amusing thing to do and I usually would play one game a day maybe with the physios.

GPR: But you never studied any openings, right?

MS: No. What I think is interesting… most of the openings can be very similar, but then positions become so different, and it can be so dependent on the mood you have. And that’s what I think is super-fascinating about chess.  

Schumacher can regularly be found playing chess with his physio on F1 race weekends

Photo by: Motorsport Images

“I still feel weird about people taking pictures”

As we change the topic, it becomes harder to concentrate on the game itself – and this means that we are giving each other opportunities to seize the initiative.

Schumacher is aggressive, and so it doesn’t take very long until his queen appears in the centre of the board, taking on d5, where his pawn has just been captured.

GPR: Did it help that, when you raced in karting, you did so under your mother’s surname rather than your father’s?

MS: I think it helped me in the sense that the media attention was just smaller. I was just able to drive more freely in a way.

GPR: Did anyone not know who you were?

MS: In karting? No, to be honest, everybody knew. It was definitely good for me to be able to just be a child and not have, you know, too much media or whatever. But it is something which is still trailing me now.

At the time, we were always so cautious about people taking pictures. So we... I personally, even when I was a child, I would say, “Could you please delete the pictures?” Sometimes I still feel weird about it, if I see people are taking pictures on the streets, I always... just look away. But that’s just a reflex [now], I grew up like that.

Even now, Schumacher admits he finds it uncomfortable having his photo taken

Photo by: Motorsport Images

GPR: Your former team-mate at Haas, Nikita Mazepin, once told us he was amazed to see
 that you, as a family, didn’t use the power of the surname to get, let’s say, preferential treatment, because in the world of karting there are always possibilities…

MS: We never did that. My parents wanted to give me the opportunity to prove myself, to compete with the same material as others, not to be privileged on that. Because I didn’t want that either. And I’m really thankful for that. I’ve had the chance to prove myself in Formula 4, F3 and F2, just as I did in karting. And that’s what matters, because the moment you reach F1, nobody’s gonna give you anything here.

GPR: But there are always people around with conspiracy theories.

MS: Of course. It’s just a matter of how you take that. I think I was able to take it in a right way.

GPR: How did you learn not to take it in the wrong way?

MS: Time. Over time.  

GPR: And through advice?

MS: And advice, yes. 

GPR: Even in F1, some people will say – like it was in F3 – that “he got his engine turned up”, right?

MS: For sure. And that’s normal. You know, there’s a quote I was told when I was very young: “Pity is given for free, envy must be earned.” I went by that quote for a very long time. And if people are jealous about what I’m doing, then I’m doing something right.

Suspicion surrounded Schumacher when he was racing in F3

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

“I’m born into this, I can’t choose my surname”

That quote about pity and envy is attributed to the German television presenter Robert Lembke. If you Google it in German – “Mitleid gibt es umsonst, Neid muß man erarbeiten” –
you’ll land on the die Welt newspaper’s website, where that quote is the headline of an interview with Mick’s father, Michael.

The interview was published in October 1998, five months before Mick was born. So it
 seems obvious from whom he heard that quote.

Pieces disappear from the board at lightning speed. While grilling Mick, it seems that we’ve made a huge blunder, leaving our queen hanging. Our opponent picks it off on f6 and gets a significant advantage…


GPR: Have you ever thought “I’m not good enough for this”?

MS: I think self-doubt is very common. And not only as racing drivers, but as human beings. So, yes, I think it’s normal. Even when I was leading the championship in F3 and F2, I always had [that thought]: “Am I good enough for the next race?” If it’s a healthy amount, it’s the right thing. If it becomes unhealthy, then for sure it’s not.

GPR: Was it purely self-doubt? Or was it “Am I good enough to be a Schumacher?”

MS: No. Luckily, it’s not the kind of pressure that I have. Let’s say it like this: I never doubted if I’m good enough for F1. It’s simply because I knew that I want this. It’s because I love this sport. And the question if I have enough talent or not, honestly… I feel the races and championships I’ve won were enough to prove that.

Now, to come back to your question, if I have a feeling if I’m good enough for the name Schumacher? I would say so. But anyway, I’m born into this, I can’t choose my surname. I’m trying to make myself proud, and also my family proud. And therefore, I think the question is irrelevant for me. Or I don’t have to ask myself that question.

GPR: There’s a scene in the RTL movie released ahead of your first season in F1. It’s one of your first tests in an F4 car and there are 15 photographers taking pictures of you. We suggested to Guenther Steiner that this could be taken as proof of how much you love motor racing, because you could easily choose a different path in life and not have all that attention. He said we were being too dramatic…

MS: I think if you ask any driver, “What’s your least favourite part of the sport?” they’ll probably say, “Not being in the car.” It’s the same for me. Rather than having to do media, TV or whatever, I’d gladly use that time to sit in the car and drive.

I’ve done this sport since I was a child, and it’s probably the only sport I’ve never felt like I got sick of. If I do other sports, after half a year or whatever, I feel like I’ve achieved what I wanted and “OK, now I go to the next one”. But I feel like in racing there’s always so much more to achieve and so much to go for. It’s just so much fun in general that... I can never get enough of it.

The 2022 season did not get off to the best of starts for Schumacher, especially with the hefty crash in Saudi Arabia

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“You will always learn something new”

It must be tricky to characterise this season as ‘fun’. As we speak, Mick is yet to score his first points in F1, and he’s had two big crashes, in Jeddah and Monaco. His Miami clash with Sebastian Vettel was curiously clumsy – indeed, having been in a very sub-par car last season, he’s perhaps lacking wheel-to-wheel racing experience at F1 level.

Immediately before we sat down to play, Mick spoke in a press conference about having to master the “many different tools” you have to use to overtake in F1, compared with the very straightforward approach in F3 or F2. “It’s something, frankly, I’m learning from scratch since the beginning of the year,” he said; did he take the same approach learning chess?

As we move towards the endgame, Mick’s plan is obvious. His h-pawn has a clear path towards the edge of the board. We’ve got a rook to protect our back rank, but it’s also busy defending Black’s own pawn on f7 from the constant threat of White’s still-active queen. We’re forced to waste a couple of moves bringing our king over to help, and Schumacher uses this time to push his pawn all the way up to h6.

GPR: Do you feel in some way that you’re still a rookie in F1?

MS: At some things, yes. Again, in this sport, you will always learn something new. There’s so much happening in Formula 1, compared with F2 and F3. There’s nothing to prepare you for it. We can change engine braking, differential with all the switches. So you want to have the capacity to be sure it’s the right thing to do in the moment, you know?

GPR: Did you – for your own sake – need an explanation why in Bahrain you couldn’t match Kevin Magnussen’s pace? Was there any damage after your first-lap clash with Ocon?

MS: No, it was a bit of a rookie mistake. In Bahrain, I still had the opinion that the way
you have to set up the car, to approach qualifying, was similar to last year. It was normal for us last year from one run to another to add front flap, because of the grip adjustment over qualifying. [But this time it] ended up giving us a car which was way too overbalanced. And I had to carry that through to the race, which meant I was using my rear tyres more and I couldn’t match the pace.

GPR: Then there was a crash in Saudi. Did that affect your confidence?

MS: I don’t think it broke or minimised my confidence in any way. I was more annoyed
that I wasn’t able to race. These cars are so new still to us, so it’s very much still something where [we have to ask ourselves] “are we going in the right direction or not?” And it takes time to achieve that.

We actually, similar to Bahrain, fell into a trap, adding a bit of front flap, which just tipped it over and made... I don’t know if you saw the video, but in that first section [of the lap] I have a small correction, because of the rear. And that meant I displaced the car by a metre, which then became one and a half metres in the next corner. And then, because of the kerb [being] the way it is, it meant the rear of the car sat onto that kerb. So yeah, it was an unfortunate series of events which led to this. I think in Q3 [Fernando] Alonso and Esteban [Ocon] came quite close to it as well, with the same problem.

Schumacher has GP Racing on the ropes in this game of chess

Photo by: Motorsport Images

“Our races so far were pretty decent”

We’re about to get destroyed here. Our last chance for a counter play is to try and promote one of our own pawns, and there’s only one that can even dream of it. It had moved from its original g-file to f-file, capturing Mick’s bishop in the beginning of the game, and is now rushing towards the edge of the board.

The bad news is we had to clear the path by removing White’s knight for the price of our bishop – and as more and more pieces leave the board, Schumacher’s queen becomes even more powerful. It is somewhat overloaded, though, because Black’s rook is now ready to capture White’s h-pawn any second, so Mick’s most valuable piece is busy defending it and protecting the f1 square at the same time.

GPR: Did you have a difficult chat with Sebastian [Vettel] after Miami?

MS: No, not at all. What’s good is that we’re able to sit together and talk about it, and get each other’s opinion on it.  

GPR: How difficult is it to take positives from a race like that? Because, as you said, it was one of the best ones for you so far.

MS: I wouldn’t say it’s hard. It’s a matter of turning that positive energy that we had into something good. And I feel that’s what we did. I think our races so far were all pretty decent. If we go back to Barcelona, for example, if we hadn’t had the issues, I’m sure we would have been in the top seven, if not higher.

Schumacher battled with incorrect suspension during Spanish GP

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

GPR: What issues?

MS: In FP3, when we burned down the brakes, it also left us with a gearbox change. When we changed the gearbox, unfortunately, we – because we were so tight on time [before qualifying] – overlooked that we were putting… instead of left and right suspension, we put left on both sides, which sets the car in this case around 12 to 15 millimetres lower than you want. If you saw the video, I’m touching [the track surface] so much more – that meant we broke the floor multiple times. And that just messed up everything. And, on top of that, we didn’t know that had happened until after the race.

GPR: Does it help for your confidence, knowing that there was nothing you could have done differently in the circumstances?

MS: For sure. I don’t need to tell it to anybody. But I think it’s good for people to know also, because then at least they can say, “Ah, OK, that’s the reason.” For me, Barcelona by far was one of the best weekends that we had, along with Miami. And to be reassured on that side is very positive.

GPR: Is the pressure in Formula 1 bigger than in junior categories?

MS: Yeah. And I think that’s pretty normal. Just because it’s F1, you know? Pressure means so many different things for different people. Like, pressure could be different for you than it could be for me…

Mick smiles cheekily and frees his queen from its defensive duties, moving it all the way from h1 to a8, checking our exposed king – which has to move, allowing the aggressor to capture the rook on h8. Black’s f-pawn promotes to a queen and checks, but in a few moves Schumacher brings his king to safety, hiding it behind our own pawn island at the side of the board.

“Mick, if you win, this article isn’t going to be published,” we deploy our final bluff. But he calls it anyway by moving the queen to f6, which is protected by his pawn, checking. Our king has to move again, and Schumacher doesn’t even need to turn his h-pawn into another queen. Promoting to a rook is also enough to check Black’s king one more time, which leaves us with only one option - to resign the game.

Mick sits back, victorious.

Schumacher can be left satisfied after this comprehensive victory

Photo by: Motorsport Images