How good Mick Schumacher really is, is difficult to assess because of the considerable gap the Haas team has with the other teams. The German has consistently beaten his teammate Nikita Mazepin, but even that says very little so far. It is a learning year for the talented son of the legendary Michael Schumacher.
Speaking to The Race Mick’s race engineer Gary Gannon commented on how he feels his protégé is performing and how Haas is coping with having constantly learning rookies: “Mick is absorbing information, he’s a really good, fast learner, but we’re running into scenarios in the race that he hasn’t run into before and he doesn’t know what to expect. Afterwards, you think ‘ah, if I had told him that, it would have gone better,’ because sometimes you only have this moment to take advantage of a situation.”
Still, Gannon is impressed with Schumacher: “Generally, when we prepare Mick for something he’s really good. Like all his race management details, he was already really aware of what needed to be done, but he just learns a new management scenario every race. We have to ask him less and less for things like the tasks he has to do in the car. They all become automatic for him, which is great.”
Gannon, for his part, nevertheless thinks it’s hard to put a label on how fast the Haas drivers actually are: “We can’t really judge the speed of the drivers because the car is difficult to drive,” he says.
