Mick Schumacher is buzzing with excitement after the pre-season test, as he feels quite upbeat and positive about his first F1 season.
Even though, it looks like that Haas will be fighting at the far end of the grid, considering their choice of less development with VF-21, it isn’t hampering the enthusiasm and excitement of Schumacher, who will make his F1 debut in 2021.
After his few runs at the end of the 2020 F1 season, Schumacher had his formal outing with Haas alongside teammate Nikita Mazepin in Bahrain last weekend. It didn’t start off well with a gearbox issue, but the German managed to get solid running post that.
It is unclear if Haas can penetrate the high midfield pack, but Schumacher is upbeat still. His enthusiasm could be seen right from the day of livery unveil, when he spoke to media, which continued to after driving the F1 car in Bahrain.
“I have to say, it feels even better driving this car, than I expected,” said a smiling Schumacher to media including FormulaRapida.net. “Obviously you drive a car [in general], but it [was] really fun. And it’s something I won’t get as quickly bored off.
“I’m just really looking forward to driving more. Hopefully, the race weekend, come quick enough, if that makes sense. So I’m really looking forward to the season. I would love to drive every day, I could put another eight days to it and just go straight into race weekend.
“As for the less days of days this year, obviously, I would have not said no to more testing, but definitely to drive this, I mean, beautiful car, this era of cars are great. Obviously, the speed that you carry through corners is quite impressive.
“All the tools that you have on the car, that you can change during driving, are quite interesting. That’s the interesting part on driving which really what gives me this excitement, because I’m able to communicate with my team and take the best decision and gain performance through it.
“That’s really what’s fun, and just driving the car and working with this great team and being able to kind of do what I love, and kind of combine that with my job is quite amazing, to be honest. So, pretty happy to be here,” summed up Schumacher, who then talked about how his testing went and how much is needed for a rookie like him.
“I learned a massive amount of new things, which were all positive,” said Schumacher. “And being able to get those laps under my belt, that’s quite a big difference. It really gave me a new way of seeing F1 and also understanding driving on track.
“Obviously, it’s quite a big difference to F2, I have to say. I really enjoy driving on those tyres, especially the C2 was very interesting to be driving on, quite a hard compound and being able to push hard on them was quite different to Formula 2.
“I’s a lot of fun, driving in Bahrain in a F1 car. Obviously, with power steering, you have a lot less physical [work] and therefore you’re able to be push more. It’s a lot of fun driving an F1 car around here, being able to push so hard and being able to rely on the rear and really feeling the grip, and feeling the changes in every setup you do and being able to give feedback straight away, if you change something on the steering wheel was really nice.
“So there are a lot of tools that you can use to improve the driving on track and instantly, so that’s pretty positive for me coming from Formula 2, where you basically had nothing to change and you really have to live with what you get. And in general, I think obviously three days testing are not a lot. But I have to say I feel comfortable already now.
“If it was by my liking, I would love to drive every day. I would be thrilled to be able to do as many kilometers and drive every single day because that’s my passion. That’s my love. [To be honest] I will be ready to go racing tomorrow [whenever]. Really. We have done so much analyses through first day of running.
“Obviously Nikita was able to drive more on Day 1 and get those race runs in. So I was able to go through all the data. And then obviously, looking at Day 2, I was kind of able to correlate that to Day 1. Yes, the track conditions are different. But nevertheless, I was able to extract the feeling that I have on track.
“And then really able to feel every little change that I do, that kind of changes the way the tyre behaves on track and the car behaves on track. So yeah, I do feel ready. I would go racing tomorrow [whenever], if it would be up to me,” summed up Schumacher.
Here’s lap count from Bahrain F1 Test
Here’s Mick Schumacher on why MSC