F1 | Saudi Arabian GP | Mick Schumacher reveals he did not race because of car preservation: “I definitely want to get those points and I want to get them in Melbourne.”
The Haas driver faced a hard crash during the Quali and he did not race. He explains what happened and what is his goal for Melbourne
The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix has been a though one. From the missile attack during the Free Practices to Mick Schumacher’s big accident in the Quali, to not talk about the issues on the (lack of) security of Jeddah’s track, the attention has always been high.
Hi everyone, I just wanted to say that I’m ok🙏
— Mick Schumacher (@SchumacherMick) March 26, 2022
Thank you for the kind messages.
The car felt great @haasf1team, we’ll come back stronger❤️ pic.twitter.com/Mwpy0767kN
The most important image of the whole weekend, though, has been to see Mick Shumacher to come out healthy from his Haas after a strong accident during the Q2. An incident so aggressive to tear down in two his single-seater.
“I feel alright and I think this shows the safety of these cars to be able to walk away – Schumacher told the media on the following days, when he went to the track to juts watch the race. – If this happened twenty years ago, I don’t think they would have been able to do that so thank you everyone involved in safety.”
The Haas driver revealed what he has been able to think about during the impact.
“I think you know that most of the time when you’re having an accident or you know something is going wrong, the time changes, it feels a little bit slower. I saw the wall coming towards me and I knew I could prepare for the impact and stuff. Unfortunate, because I had the car to go in Q3 but we’ll have to do it in Melbourne now.”
He then, asked if he analysed with team what happened, explained what are their conclusions on the accident.
“It seems like a small slide going through Turn 9, which then upset obviously temperatures with the tyre and positioning, and then coming towards the curb, I basically was 20- 30 centimetres wider than I wanted to be and that meant that the rear tyre dropped over the curb and the car bottoms out.”
“These days, - he continues – the cars are so low that the moment in which we touch a curb we are as high as it is here, we lose contact to the ground and that means there is nothing holding us back from spinning. I saw a few other guys and other teams have the same or similar issues.”
Mick Schumacher then told the reasons why he did not race in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix even if he felt okay and had to stay in the garage just watching the race.
“Well, it is a combination of a few things. One of them is car preservation, just in case something else would happen today. I definitely want to get those points and I want to get them in Melbourne.”
One of the hottest topics of the GP has been the security of the event. Many criticized it so it is the case to know what the young German thinks about it has he experimented two accidents here in two years.
“There are certainly a few things we have to look at. I don’t know what will happen in the future but we will have to have a serious discussion about this.”
