German Grand Prix – Mick Schumacher will take the wheel of his father Michael’s all conquering F2004 for demonstration runs at Hockenheim this weekend.
The son of seven time Formula 1 World Champion Michael, Mick Schumacher now races in the Formula 2 Championship with Prema and enjoying the backing of the Ferrari Driver Academy.
With Formula 2 not racing this weekend, Mick is free to partake in the German Grand Prix weekend as a spectator but Ferrari have decided to find some work for him to do – namely, driving his dad’s F2004 around the venue which once packed to the rafters with cheering Schumi fans and the noise of klaxon horns would blare every time one of Michael’s scarlet Ferraris entering the stadium section.
The F2004, Michael’s last title winning car, won the German Grand Prix in its title year, and Mick will drive it around in front of the home fans in a series of demonstration runs over the weekend.
“I think it will be special.” beamed Mick. “I have a lot of good memories of Hockenheim, particularly from winning the Formula 3 European Championship there last year, and to drive this car around there on a Grand Prix weekend is pretty amazing. I’m already very excited. I just hope everybody will have as much fun as I will.
“The F2004 is a symbol of great times for Formula 1 in Germany and I imagine that some of the spectators will have flashbacks to those times. I will do my best to help spark those good memories and I’ll try to make sure that everybody has a great time!”
While Schumacher has driven a contemporary F1 car by taking part in a test at Bahrain with Ferrari’s SF90 earlier this year, he hasn’t driven one of the notoriously tricky V10 monsters from the early 00s and he says that he hasn’t been able to get in some preparation work in advance either: “I would have loved to be able to do some preparation laps but unfortunately I just will have to wait and see. We’ll do a seat fitting on Saturday morning of the race weekend but I am sure it will work out fine. In the end, it will be demo-laps for pleasure, and I would really like to thank the owner of the car and Ferrari for giving me the opportunity.”
Mick has already driven one of Michael’s cars, namely the 1994 Benetton B194, which he drove around Spa-Francorchamps in 2018 during his F3 campaign. Asked about how he felt about jumping into a very different handling car in the F2004, he said: “Since the F2004 was such a dominant car it will be thrilling for me to find out how it feels to drive it. It’s going to be exciting to experience the power of the engine, and I am very curious to understand how cars from that era feel on track. In terms of others, I think all of them would be interesting to drive!”
