Mick Schumacher completed a day of F1 testing with Ferrari at Fiorano on Friday morning, and says he’s ready for his Haas F1 career.
The Formula 2 World Champion of 2020, Mick Schumacher, says he’s ready to kickstart his Formula 1 career after completing a day of testing with Ferrari.
Son of seven time World Champion Michael, Schumacher has landed a seat with Haas for 2021 and, as part of Ferrari’s preparations for the year, was invited to take part in the private test. With Haas being a Ferrari customer team and Mick being part of their Driver Academy, Schumacher took over from Carlos Sainz on Thursday afternoon and drove for a few hours before getting back in on Friday morning for more laps in the 2018 SF71-H.
He completed over 100 laps in total over his track time, serving as a warm-up before official pre-season testing with Haas in Bahrain in mid-March.
“Finally sitting in a race car again is a feeling I was missing a lot.” said Schumacher. “I think today has definitely been a positive day at the track. We managed to get through the entire programme that we had scheduled without any problems and it was clearly very useful to be able to get through so much mileage at the wheel of a car in view of the coming season that will be starting in about a month and a half with the pre-season testing.”
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Having driven the SF71-H in another test at Fiorano back in September as well, Schumacher says it works very well as a baseline for adjusting to Formula 1 machinery.
“The SF71H is a car from 2018 but its behaviour on the track and the feelings that it gives to the driver are very similar, both in terms of how it behaves on the track and physical stress.” he said. “That makes it an excellent base when it comes to preparation for the new season. Driving at Fiorano is always great anyway because the track is technical and demanding.”
Having won the 2020 Formula 2 title with Prema after a close battle with fellow Ferrari junior Callum Ilott, Schumacher says it almost seemed unfair to have had such a good year while so much was problematic for people around the world.
“People who work in racing tend to look to the future and not back and that goes for me too. It’s a matter of mentality, because in such a competitive environment, we always think about what more we can do and how to do better.” Schumacher said. “But perhaps in this case one can make an exception, but not based on personal reasons. The pandemic really affected everyone and created serious problems for a lot of people.”
“That’s why it seems almost unfair for me to be happy about what 2020 was for me, because to be honest, it was the best year since I’ve been racing, the one in which the dream I’ve had since I was a kid came true. Now I can say I’m ready for Formula 1.”
