Mick Schumacher, Prema, Formula Three, Hockenheimring, 2018

Mick Schumacher ‘has potential to succeed in F1’ – Wolff

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In the round-up: Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff says he believes Mick Schumacher has the potential to succeed in Formula 1 in the future.

What they say

Mick Schumacher will move up to Formula Two with Prema:

[At] Mercedes we have a very positive outlook, a positive relationship with young drivers. Michael Schumacher started as a Mercedes young driver in sports cars and became the best of all times. And in the same way today we’re looking at very young drivers like we did in the past with Pascal Wehrlein and Esteban Ocon and George Russell. And we hope to see these kids graduate successfully into Formula 1 and make hopefully long careers and hopefully one day stay in a Mercedes. And I personally take a lot of enjoyment watching them come together with coaching them, mentoring them with our group. And I think it’s very important for Mercedes to play a role in the young driver programme.

As for Mick Schumacher he won the Formula Three championship this year with a Mercedes engine which is great but he’s not part of the Mercedes-Benz junior programme. I think the most important is to give him time. He has this incredible legacy of having a father who was the most successful racing driver of all time. He’s won F3 so he’s ticked the box. Now it’s going into F2 which will be very difficult again, against many experienced drivers. But I have no doubt that he has the potential to be a successful driver in Formula 1, maybe one day with us, maybe not. But an exciting young man, definitely.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Q3 tyre rule? Two mandatory pit stops? @StefMeister isn’t a fan of either:

It’s a stupid rule that does nothing but put teams at the tail end of the top 10 at a disadvantage compared to those immediately behind.

As to adding a second mandatory stop, It would do nothing because mandatory stops never work to improve the racing. All it would do is put a greater emphasis on sitting back and trying to undercut which is the only thing the single mandatory stop we already have does. If the goal is to create overtaking then you want no stops because that is the only way you put the emphasis on going for an overtake on the track.
@StefMeister

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On this day in F1

  • 25 years ago today Sauber ran its new C13 – the team’s second F1 car – for the first time at the Circuit de Catalunya

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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15 comments on “Mick Schumacher ‘has potential to succeed in F1’ – Wolff”

  1. COTD, thank you Stef, I totally agree.
    There are none so blind as those that will not see.

  2. The Q3 tyre rule – aimed at making it easier for the midfield to keep up with the front-runners – made more sense when it was introduced, because the top 10 cars – RBR, McLaren, Ferrari, Merc and Renault/Lotus – were a more homogeneous group, and the midfield started after that. However, it doesn’t make sense any more now, because now the midfield begins at P7, and the advantage of the top 6 is so gigantic that the Q3 tyre rule doesn’t even affect them any more. So now, all it does is to put P7-10 at a disadvantage over those who just missed the cut. It’s fair to criticize the rule, but keep in mind that there was a point to it when it was introduced.

    That being said, it also depends on the race. In Singapore for example, the disadvantage of starting in the top 10 was huge, whereas in most other races, it was usually still better than to go out in Q2.

    1. I’d say – no more mandatory pit stop during the race.
      There will also be just one qualifying session of an hour, but every driver needs to start the race on the tires they set their fastest time on during qualifying.
      If you want or need to start on a different set, then you start from the back of the grid. If more drivers choose to do so they are placed at the back in the qualifying order between them.

      No more artificial boundaries, but there’ll be racing as long as a substantial part of the field either can’t or chooses not to use a single set of tires in the race. The decision to do so may evolve during qualifying, as times tumble and drivers find themselves getting pushed towards the back of the grid.

      1. Bart, why do you want to go back to the one hour qualifying rule given that was generally agreed upon to be a bad way of organising qualifying? It entrenched a similar performance advantage for the top teams, since usually they could afford to sit back and let the lower ranked and midfield teams clean the track and rubber it in for them, so you are doing nothing to make the grid any more diverse – meanwhile, by including the requirement to start on the set of tyres you qualified on, you’re seemingly combining the worst aspects of the older systems of qualifying with what many would complain is one of the worse aspects of the current system.

        As for your comment of “No more artificial boundaries” – aren’t you really just switching one arbitrary set of artificial contrivances for another one?

  3. “Instead they make more of a jet engine sound”

    I’d definitely like to know what make of vacuum cleaner Katy Fairman owns…because I would sure as hell like to get one!

    1. I mean there are electric jet engines… maybe she is talking about those.

  4. “I think what makes things interesting in Formula E, and I really hope it happens with me, is that many drivers are able to win the race.”

    I like Massa’s appreciation of the more democratic, everyone is a winner FE ethos. But F1 is stuck in the past – because for each race they only permit one winner, not many. ;-)

    1. You missed that he said “are able to”

  5. Regarding the Tom Spencer tweet… If McLaren can’t win races, at least they have advitorial marketing pace to win hearts and minds in the PR battle for clickbait supremacy.

  6. “Yes, the battery-powered cars don’t grunt, roar . . . but they don’t pretend to either.”
    Well, that’s all right then… For a while there I thought it was all a pretence… ;-)

  7. The big problem with Motorsport ties with McLaren is that they made it worse for the team during this year. Eeeevery article last year made a big fuss about McLaren’s ability to do very well this year, and it still failed to do so, making it look a lot worse than they would have if everyone kept quiet about it. It was through them that those “we have the best chassis” quotes were published, most of the time…

  8. I can see how annoying McLaren-Motorsport collaboration is, especially when it become monopoly. But we living in the age of information so if Google can adjust the algorithm to give search result that match it’s political view why not Zak Brown?

    RaceFans should see this as an opportunity. Send the motorsport news bias to Ferrari and Mercedes with proposal of acquiring non-majority shares. I don’t mind having to see more non F1 racing activity of Mercedes or Ferrari here. I believed RaceFans can still make a distinction of promoted and regular articles.

  9. MIck Schumacher will get to F1, just like Bruno Senna did, whether he succeeds or not in f1 is any one’s guess at this stage. He seems more relaxed than his dad, so I’m not sure if he is putting in as much effort as his dad did, but reading body language doesn’t give answers either.

  10. Yo Dawg, I heard you like McLaren, so I put a McLaren in your news so you can snooze while we lose.

  11. I thoroughly agree with the COTD. I wouldn’t be against scrapping the rule of having to start the races with the same set that was used for the personal best Q2 lap, but two stops as the mandatory number for pit stops instead of one, not really in favor of it. The aero is the primary source of why the teams tend to lean more towards a one-stop strategy most of the time, not the number of pit stops.
    – Tom Spencer’s tweet, though.

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