Mick Schumacher said his Haas team have “loads of positives” to take from Montreal despite his early retirement with power unit failure while running in seventh place.
Schumacher had his best qualifying of his career at the Canadian Grand Prix, starting the race in sixth. He was running in seventh place, on lap 18, when his Ferrari power unit let him down.“It’s obviously very frustrating,” Schumacher admitted. “But these things happen; it’s Formula 1, everything is right on edge.
“So we’ve just got to swallow that pill. We have loads of positive things we can take away from here.”
He drew encouragement from the improved performance Haas showed during the race weekend. “We knew that we had the pace all along but we had some different races. So it’s good to have a good qualifying, it’s good to have a good race pace.
“We haven’t had any updates, it’s basically the same as the beginning of the season and we’re still doing great. So it’s obviously very positive.”
Schumacher said he was “building up” his pace when the problem struck, following three days of mixed conditions at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. “We’ve had a wet track, we had a dry track. So it’s obviously trying to find the new grip levels and wind conditions were very different. We were just getting into rhythm and I’m sure there was more to come.”
He admitted retiring from a position that could have secured his first Formula 1 points was painful. “It’s always tough to accept these things,” said Schumacher. “It’s probably tougher if you’re in a points-paying position and you have to retire the car in seventh or whatever, picking up the pace to catch Esteban [Ocon] ahead. It’s never the best.”
He said that past experiences had taught him to keep his faith that things would come right. “Eventually my luck will change, hopefully. It’s obviously tough, but I’ve had these seasons in the past and we’ve managed to win after all.”
“We have a few more races to go,” he added. “I’m sure that we’ll have more opportunities to come.”
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Jere (@jerejj)
21st June 2022, 18:07
He was unlucky to lose out on a decent points-scoring opportunity through something out of his control, but I’m positive he can further improve & keep an upward trend in his performance.
BasCB (@bascb)
21st June 2022, 21:36
Yeah, I would see this as a positive for him too @jerejj. He had a great qualifying in difficult circumstances, beating Kevin. And while he lost some places at the start, he did not make the stupid move that got Magnussen in trouble, instead having a solid drive nicely defending until the car gave up.
It will give him the confidence to build on for the next events and will take the media pressure off of him a bit too.
David
22nd June 2022, 7:13
Except Mick did not beat Kevin in qualifying – he was a place and 0.396s behind him.
BasCB (@bascb)
22nd June 2022, 11:40
Yeah, sorry guys, i got that wrong there, Kevin was faster. Mick was not too far of.
Morten Kjeldgaard
22nd June 2022, 8:08
Magnussen qualified 5. Mick 6.!
Stupid move?? Thats racing – side by side..
bosyber (@bosyber)
22nd June 2022, 8:57
Indeed @jerejj and @bascb, while the stats say this was a lost race for him, this weekend was a huge step up from him on a personal level and important for his standing in the team too who were looking at running out of parts from his mistakes before.
George.be
21st June 2022, 18:13
Mick has a lot of pressure on his shoulders, but I think we’re starting to see a pattern of bad luck that is skewing his results. Quite a few crashes he had, had heavy damage due to pound-on effects. Some others had quite a bit of luck that their spins or half spins didn’t end in the wall.
I think that once he’s got a few good results, and his confidence is returning, he’ll might start to shine.
Baku proved that his confidence isn’t there at times, and it is very difficult to gain that if you’re in the corner being beaten from all sides.
Mark (@blueruck)
21st June 2022, 18:59
Biggest surprise for me in the story was no updates on the Haas at all this season. I assumed they had made updates but they weren’t working that good. To be where they are at with zero updates is impressive.
Christopher Rehn (@chrischrill)
22nd June 2022, 8:56
They will only bring one major update this year, and as of now it seems scheduled for Hungary which is some time away still! Budget is still very tight for them despite the cap.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
23rd June 2022, 21:53
Oh, they’ve been efficient then this season.
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
21st June 2022, 20:20
I believe he is in F1 mainly due to who he is, but I thought he did really well this weekend.
Far better than some other drivers I could name.