Mick Schumacher reckons that the limited time in practice sessions and lack of testing makes it difficult for rookies in FIA Formula 2 (F2) Championship.
Having won the European F3 title in 2018, Schumacher made his F2 debut with Prema Racing in 2019, where he finished 12th in the drivers’ standings with the lone win. He was the third best rookie after Guanyu Zhou and the late Anthoine Hubert.
It was a strange season for Prema overall where a title-winning F2 team finished only ninth in the teams’ standings with 68 points. They had multiple issues during race weekends which reflected in results of Schumacher and Sean Gelael.
Talking about his maiden F2 season, Schumacher spoke about the lack of practice time and testing days which hampered not only his year but also Prema. The German also summed up his highs and lows from the 2019 season.
“We had very good races,” said Schumacher to media including FormulaRapida.net. “The races where I was amazed and where things went so well, like at the Red Bull Ring or Monza, made up well for our championship.
“We also worked well on tracks with a lot of tyre degradation as we managed to keep the tyres alive and to be able to top them off at the end. I have to admit that keeping the tyres intact was a bit more difficult for me at the beginning.
“Qualifying may not have looked so good on paper, but it felt very good in the car. We had qualifying sessions where the Top 5 would have been easily possible, but that didn’t work one hundred percent because of traffic or because I made some mistakes.
“In terms of negative things that I had imagined differently were free practice. We drive extremely little I think. That’s extremely difficult in this type of championship. We drive half an hour in free practice, 20 minutes in qualifying and the races each last about an hour.
“If you add that up, it’s not very much. We’ll have six more test days, but in 2020 there’ll be less of that. That makes rookies’ life a little more difficult.” Schumacher will line-up for his second F2 year in 2020 with 2019 F3 champion, Robert Shwartzman, at Prema.
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