Two millions of euros. That was the cost of the accidents Mick Schumacher for Haas in 2022. That figure and his poor results last season they cost him his seat at Haas and, therefore, they left him off the Formula 1 grid.
Six months later, the man who made the decision to throw out the ‘kaiser’s son’, Günther Steiner, has spoken about his time at the team, and his words about the pilot They have not left anyone indifferent.
Steiner has remembered the day that Schumacher crashed the car returning to the pits. It happened at the 2022 Japanese Grand Prix, after some free practice. At the end of the session, the German driver lost control of his car on the wet Suzuka track, smashing it against the wall. “It happened on the damn lap back to the pits!” exclaimed Steiner when asked about the accident.
“No one else wrecked his car”
“On the lap back to the pits! Clear, the track was very wet but no one else wrecked their car while they were driving back to the pits.”
“We lose a car after five minutes and now we have to build another. I can’t have a driver that I’m not sure can safely drive a car on a slow lap,” said the Haas boss justifying the dismissal of the German driver.
Repair the car to be able to compete the next day cost the team over $700,000, causing Steiner’s irritation: “It’s fucking ridiculous. How many people could we employ with $700,000? And now I have to find that money.”
Haas is the team with the lowest budget on the grid, so accident repairs they decreased remarkably the chances of progressing for the North American team.
When announcing Schumacher’s departure, Steiner assured that “Not a ‘pole’ like the one Magnussen did in Brazil it would have been worth it to stay”. Six months later, the Italian manager, far from regretting it, boasts of having ended, at least for the moment, Mick’s career.
