It was a bitter sweet day for Mick Schumacher today. The German driver scored his best starting grid position but it was right after crashing at the end of Q1 and causing a red flag that stopped the session abruptly. MotorLat had access to a brief meeting with the German rookie after his first Q2 where he explained what happened and his feelings towards tomorrow´s race.

Asked about his feelings on not being able to drive in Q2 and what would have happened in normal conditions, the German driver said “it was a bit bitter sweet not being able to drive in Q2…looking at it probably was very tight…I think in general we can be very happy about our performance… Looking after Fp3 we didn´t maybe look the strongest but we managed to pull something out of the hat which was obviously good. Unfortunately, we didn´t manage to conclude our session.”

When asked by MotorLat about the progress the team made from Friday to Saturday Mick was very positive about it, “On Friday we weren´t able to do Fp1, we only had one session although we were able to get knowledge from, over the night we basically work very hard and try to bring the setup to the place we wanted to be...I feel we really made a good step forward. Track temperature was a bit different from yesterday and that helped us in some ways. Nonetheless I feel we can very happy about our first Q2 appearance in one way.”

By the time of the interview, the team hadn´t had access to the car and Schumacher was still unsure about what kind of damage the car had suffered and if there would be the need to change the gearbox.

Schumacher said the accident was caused by “looking at the data it seems a combination of two factors... It was partially because I had a very good exit out of turn 5 and into turn 6 which was why I carried a bit more speed through and I think the wind conditions had changed a bit also in that particular moment. All those things combined basically equaled in the rear snapping and therefore it was very hard for me to react to it. Looking back, you can always think I could have solved things better right after the car already spun you can always try and imagine in some ways but to be fair things happen so quickly specially in those speeds that it´s very to judge where the wall is and what to do in what moment but again I think we had a car that was very good and had very good potential and it felt very good to drive it and also that reflects in the position that we´re in right now.”

When he was asked about the incidents he had in the last couple of races and his work to improve the German accepted that “mistakes are part of a learning process… If you want to go into Q2 you have to try and find those limits. Obviously if you are so close to the limit it´s very easy to make a mistake… I don´t want to justify anything all I am saying is that basically is all part of a learning process. Obviously mistakes are hard sometimes… but nonetheless we see a constant improvement and now we´re in Q2 and I think we can be happy we see we are getting close to our target and Q2 was a big target since the beginning of the season.”

If the car doesn´t need any changes that could cause penalties, Schumacher seems confident about tomorrow “long run pace actually felt pretty good. I´m looking forward to try and see where we end up. We´ve seen in the past Williams seem to be very quick in qualifying and in race pace sometimes they are the closer to us or we are the closer to them. So, hopefully we´ll be able to fight tomorrow”