“Why did it happen like this?”
Haas tactics in the sprint appalled Mick Schumacher
07/10/2022, 06:55 am
During the Formula 1 sprint in Spielberg, Mick Schumacher delivered a lap-long spectacle with record world champion Lewis Hamilton and skillfully fended off the attacks of the seven-time champion for a long time. But afterwards the 23-year-old is angry with his team and stable rival Kevin Magnussen.
Ninth place in the sprint race, forced the old master into a spectacular duel – and still served. Mick Schumacher experienced a complicated Saturday afternoon in Spielberg. After the start, the Haas driver defended his seventh place and quickly caught up with his teammate Kevin Magnussen. Schumacher was the faster man. When he started to manoeuvre, the Dane blocked him, as Schumacher complained on the radio. His request to let him pass was not heeded by the command post.
Due to the intense duel, the competitors appeared in the rear-view mirror. For example Sergio Perez, who benefited from the team’s internal struggle and quickly snapped up Schumacher. Later, when Hamilton got closer and closer, Schumacher asked if he could get back into Magnussen’s DRS window to be able to keep the Mercedes drivers at bay with additional power. But things turned out differently. Magnussen didn’t let his colleague get any closer, and at some point Schumacher’s fight against Hamilton was also lost. And that despite the fact that the Mercedes star had been desperate for several laps before the duel with the German.
“It was unnecessary to discuss it”
Schumacher complained about his racing team after the race. “It was unnecessary to discuss that. I felt like I was faster. I don’t know why the team didn’t have that feeling,” he said on Sky. There is a need for clarification in the Haas team. “What I have to understand is why did it happen like this? Because in the end we lost the points. I think if we had drawn each other, we would probably have had more points now,” the 23-year-old continued to analyze. When asked if he thinks he should have been allowed to drive in front of Magnussen, Schumacher replies “yes”. “Yes,” he also said when asked if the team refused the swap when he requested it.
However, team boss Günther Steiner saw the situation differently. “We kept a close eye on it,” he said, “if Mick had been faster, we would have seen it. We did the right thing.” Schumacher had the speed advantage “only through the DRS” in the slipstream of Magnussen. His young driver “did a fantastic job in the duel with Hamilton, you couldn’t have done it better,” said Steiner: “It’s remarkable to be able to fight with Lewis Hamilton for so long. This allowed Kevin to pull away and the points for the team to fetch.”
Magnussen pushes because he feels good
Magnussen, who finished seventh, said in the Sky interview that he didn’t know that Mick was no longer in the DRS window. He felt good and pushed. That’s how you do it in Formula 1. After all, Schumacher was able to look forward to his strong performance in the duel with Hamilton. It was “of course nice to see that we had the speed for it,” he said. “It wasn’t usually the case. We have to understand why we were so quick today compared to Lewis.”
After the race, Schumacher also had to tremble briefly: The stewards are investigating him and six other drivers because of illegal information on the radio. A little later, however, all were acquitted.
