Mick Schumacher, Prema, Formula 2, 2019

Mick Schumacher to make F1 test debut for Ferrari

2019 F1 season

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Mick Schumacher will make his official F1 test debut in next week’s post-Bahrain Grand Prix test at the wheel of a Ferrari.

The 20-year-old European Formula Three champion, who is a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, will drive for the team his father Michael Schumacher won five world championship with between 2000 and 2004.

“I am obviously more than excited and would like to thank Ferrari for giving me this opportunity,” said Schumacher. “I am really looking forward to what I’m sure will be a great experience.”

Schumacher will also start his first Formula 2 race in this weekend’s season-opening round. “For the moment, I am consciously putting all thoughts of the test to one side, because I am also very much looking forward to competing in my first F2 race and would like to focus a hundred percent on the weekend to come,” he added.

Ferrari will run Schumacher in their SF90 on the Tuesday following the race. Schumacher will also drive for Ferrari’s engine customer Alfa Romeo on the following day.

Sebastian Vettel will take over from Schumacher on day two of the test. Alfa Romeo will also give a test to Schumacher’s fellow F2 rival and FDA member Callum Ilott.

“We are firm believers in the value of the Ferrari Driver Academy as a high level training programme for talented youngsters,” said Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto. “The decision to give Charles Leclerc a race seat with our team is proof of that.

“We are therefore very pleased to be able to give Mick and Callum the opportunity to experience driving a Formula 1 car. Mick, who joined the FDA in January, and Callum, who has been with us since 2017, are definitely drivers on their way up and I believe that driving the SF90 in an official setting such as the tests in Bahrain and Barcelona can be very useful at this stage in their career.”

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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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    23 comments on “Mick Schumacher to make F1 test debut for Ferrari”

    1. Reading his name through the article gave me the chills. Thanks for not referring to him as Schumacher’s son, but just as Schumacher, it’s a nice touch.

      1. Pat Ruadh (@fullcoursecaution)
        26th March 2019, 11:16

        It will be awesome to see a Schumacher in a Ferrari again, will take me right back to my childhood.
        I really hope he can carry his great F3 form into F2 this year. He didn’t get on top of F3 until his sophomore year, and we saw the more experienced Lando struggle to make the jump from Hankooks to Pirellis last year, so I am concerned that if he has the same trouble bedding in to F2 as with F3 his stock could diminish over the coming months.

      2. Indeed.

        I’ve been watching the 1999 season on F1TV, and after Michael broke his leg, Gordon Murray starts referring to Ralf exclusively as Schumacher, which must have been pretty nice for Ralf to not have his brother hanging over him all the time.

        1. You’ve got your Murray’s mixed up there @aiii… :)

          1. There’s just too many of ‘em, really.

    2. It’s quite funny, on the radio news on the way into work this morning, the announcer just said “Micheal Schumacher’s son will make his Formula 1 debut with Ferrari next week” – No mention that it was just as a test, I wonder how many non-F1 fans that still know the Schumacher and Ferrari names (and how synonymous they are together) actually processed it as something more?

    3. This is a dream come true for me, as a lifelong fan of Michael i feel beyond excited that for at least the next 10 years the Schumacher name will be back in Formula One. I hope the pressure doesnt take its toll on Mick and i wish him all the best on this adventure

      Roll on the F2 Season this weekend !!!!!

      Lets go Schumi !!!!!!

      1. You are fan of Michael? Or you are a fan of combination of letters: “Schumacher”?

        Because if the former, it is not clear why you are so crazy about his son, who is not Michael and can’t be compared to him.
        Or Mick just “HAS to be THAT GOOD, because he is Michael’s son”, right?

        If the latter – then I don’t even want to comment.

        1. Or in reverse Max Verstappen . A much better driver than his Dad.

        2. Both my fellow F1fanatic

          I sense there is quite abit of ill feeling towards the Schumacher name within these comments

          Mick may or may not turn out to be anywhere as dedicated, skilled or as talented as is father. But his courage must be comended, even more so given the situation his familt currently find themselves in.

          I had always imagened Michael as being a team principal / team owner once, this will probably never the case now but the fact his son and the Schumacher name is again alive within our sport is something all fans should be happy about.

      2. You mean like Bruno Senna?

        1. Or dare I say Jacques Villeneuve…

    4. did anyone NOT see this coming from before day 1?

      This was telegraphed from years away… so un inspired. Just when you goto give Ferrari some credit for promoting Leclerc, they just have to remind you of the oligarch crap Ferrari is.

      1. Rough day?

      2. Amazing story. By an amazing coincidence he has the same name as his dad and he drives reasonably well.

        Have to agree, this and the ‘Winnow’ lung cancer fun – and imposing team orders on Leclerc the first race – just remind you of all those Ferrari endearing qualities you’ve been missing.

    5. Ok, another kid coming to F1.

      If you want to say, that 50% of DNA of some previous F1 driver suddenly makes him somewhat special – sorry everyone, you are gravely mistaken.
      His previous “successes” were not particularly spectacular, and F2 season didn’t even start yet…

      Or you just don’t have any other thing to be excited about?
      So you choose the first less stupid thing, and hype yourself to craziness?

    6. Nepotism not proven talent.

      1. Nepotism doesn’t win people FIA European Formula 3 Championships…

        1. But being in the right circles, with an virtually unlimited budget does.. or at least it helps. Not that that’s to any discredit to what he’s doing now, he has been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and is using it to it’s full advantage, and good on him. We’d all do the same.

        2. but it sure helps.

        3. Prema does though. Even Stroll won that championship. I get it when the fans get hyped by a great talent, but Mick had mediocre results in open wheel racing until the second half of last season.

          And I seriously doubt Mick simply upped his game. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ferrari engineers aided Prema in order to win that championship, which is probably within the rules, but it does make him look better then he is. He and Shwartzman were mighty fast at the end of the season, both Ferrari junior drivers, and their Prema/non-Ferrari junior teammates all of a sudden couldn’t keep up with them, teammates that were ahead of them in the standings in the first half of the season.

          Mick is getting a better treatment than other drivers, all for his marketing value. And that’s a shame. I really hope I’m wrong and he is the real deal, but it sure doesn’t look like that. We’ll see how he does in F2, where it is a lot harder to help the already well funded teams who already have great engineers.

          1. @montalvo, that said, how much of it was down to them lifting their game and how much was down to the form of other drivers going into decline?

            Ticktum was most vocal critic in Formula 3, but when you look at his performance in the latter part of the season, it looks more like a case of his form declining if you use Ticktum’s team mate, Vips, as a reference. Vips was the more competitive driver in the latter half of the season, picking up three heat wins and three further podiums, whilst Ticktum picked up just one victory and two podiums.

            Now, Vips probably did improve over the season, but equally, judging from Ticktum’s rather poor performance in the Asian F3 series, I do wonder if some of those rivals, such as Ticktum, ended up going into a downturn in performance. In fact, there is a particular irony that Vips joined Red Bull’s Junior Team in late 2018, and it seems that his performances relative to Ticktum in the latter part of 2018 was part of the reason why Red Bull hired him – if Ticktum doesn’t perform well this year, it is perhaps not implausible that he could end up getting sidelined in favour of Vips.

            Equally, we know that other drivers within Formula 3 are also being given assistance by the F1 teams they are associated with, so it is not just a case of Mick getting assistance. Ticktum has talked in the past about how Red Bull were training him in their simulator in advance of his Formula 3 races, not to mention that, before he entered Formula 3, Red Bull were paying for him to carry out private tests in Formula 3 cars in 2016.

            Other rookie drivers in recent years have also been getting rather extensive help from their parent teams too. McLaren were reportedly paying for Norris to carry out a lot of private testing when he was competing in Formula 3. Now, last year it was reported on this site that the FIA was introducing much stricter restrictions on Formula 2 and Formula 3 drivers carrying out private test sessions, and there were those who suspected it was because of Norris – it seems that, to discourage other teams from copying McLaren and kicking off a testing war in junior series, the FIA stepped in and clamped down on private testing.

            In that sense, I would be rather wary about saying that only Mick is “getting better treatment than other drivers”. To me, it sounds like a case of drivers who are linked with the young driver programmes of major motorsport teams having access to resources and being given a level of support that independent drivers cannot compete with, and it is just that Mick happens to be one of the higher profile examples because of his name.

    7. Ferrari is fast becoming Red Bull 2.0. B-team(s), young drivers, big names, young team, etc.

      Hardly recognisable. They are now #1 top team when it comes to promoting F1 talent to Grand Prix glory.

      Meanwhile Red Bull 1.0 has a gap in their talent pool and Mercedes lack a B-team to place their young bucks.

      Mick I hope will fall in to renwed Ferrari just at the right time 3-4 years time, unless Charles becomes a major superstar. But then Vettel will jump ship or retire.

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