On lap 26, the Formula 1 world froze for a brief moment when you saw Mick Schumacher’s two-part Haas exiting the swimming pool passage. Memories of Romain Grosjean’s serious fire accident were brought back as the Haas was also blown in two during the Frenchman’s crash in Bahrain in 2020. Even with Schumacher’s accident in qualifying in Saudi Arabia, Haas didn’t stay in one piece.
However, Schumacher’s crash ended up looking worse than it actually was, as the Tecpro barrier was able to cushion the impact well. “Physically I’m ok, but of course it’s annoying,” said the German after his crash.
“The conditions were very difficult out there and unfortunately I went a bit too far into the corner.” Schumacher lost control of his VF-22 on the transition from Turn 13 to 14 in damp and dry conditions, then hit the outer barrier before coming to a stop in the barrier after the swimming pool chicane.
“It was because I was a bit too far out in turn 14. The cars are a bit wider than last year and in this case they were a bit too wide, which is why I misjudged it,” admits the Haas driver his mistake.
“It was totally weird. When I look at the replay, I was ten centimeters off track,” says Schumacher, who suspects that he may have come across a wet spot with the front wheel outside of the ideal line.
“That then led to the rear wheel slipping and my rear end broke off. I tried to correct that, but then I slipped to the left. That’s a very, very bad thing and very annoying.”
The fact that a Haas split in half in a crash for the third time in two years was also noticed by the other drivers, as was Fernando Alonso: “The crash was massive again,” says the Alpine pilot.
“I also remember the accident in Jeddah, where the car split in half and the gearbox was no longer in the chassis, and again today. Luckily he’s fine, but it was a bad, bad accident. Hopefully we can learn something from today,” he said.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with the car, just how hard you hit it. These cars are very heavy, more than 800 kilograms, so the inertia with which you drive into the wall is much higher than earlier,” adds Alonso.
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So he still has to wait for his first Formula 1 points. However, Schumacher is convinced that he will soon be able to end the negative series: “The season is still long, the tide can turn very quickly. I’ve shown that before and I’m sure we can show it again this year.”
In addition to the German, his teammate Kevin Magnussen also had to give up early in the Principality: “I had some problem with the engine. We had to pit because I had no more power,” says the Dane.
“Things were going well up until then, we were P11 and a lot faster than Bottas. I was really looking forward to that pit stop as I had just told the team I wanted to switch to slicks while a couple of riders behind me were still on intermediates changed,” he explains.
“We were still on rain tires and wanted to go straight to slicks and that would have been a great opportunity. So I’m very disappointed because we missed a good opportunity to score points and recover from a disappointing day yesterday. That Auto was great and had really good pace in these conditions.”
“It was a disappointing day for us,” Haas team boss Günther Steiner sums up. “Kevin was very quick and we were just waiting to overtake Bottas with the pit stop. Unfortunately, he then had a water leak from his ERS system. Obviously, as far as Mick is concerned, it’s not very satisfying to see another big crash, which is why we just have to look forward now.”
This article was written by Kevin Herman
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The original of this article “”Pointless” series in Formula 1 continues: Criticism from the team to Mick Schumacher is growing” comes from Motorsport-Total.com.
