Haas driver Mick Schumacher explains 'car preservation' the reason he will not race at Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
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Updated 27/03/2022 at 16:24 GMT
Mick Schumacher's Haas car appeared to be almost completely destroyed by his huge crash at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix qualifying session on Saturday evening. Speaking on Sunday he explained that he would not be competing with Haas despite a decent lap time as team were focused on 'car preservation' for the Australian Grand Prix.
Mick Schumacher (Haas) crash - GP of Saudi Arabia 2022
Image credit: Getty Images
Mick Schumacher has explained why he will not be racing at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix after his huge crash in qualifying.
The German was looking on course to get through Q2 on Saturday when he started to lose his way in turn nine before ending his involvement with a collision with a wall and finishing up around turn 12.
Such was the impact of the crash that his Haas car disintegrated as designed to absorb the force of the blow rather than risk the health of the driver, and speaking to Sky Sports it appeared the design had done its job.
“I feel alright, not too sore either,” he said. “Just shows the safety of these cars these days. To be able to walk away from this - 20 years ago, people wouldn’t have been able to do that - so thank you to everybody involved in the safety.”
Schumacher explained how the accident had happened, revealing things started to go wrong much earlier on the course than his final resting place.
“It’s interesting, because most of the time when you have an accident, when you know something is going wrong, time changes a bit, goes a bit slow,” he began.
“I saw the wall coming towards me prepared for impact and stuff. Unfortunately, because I had the car for sure going to Q3.
“It seems like we had a small slide going through turn nine, I upset the tyres’ temperature but obviously positioning, coming towards the curb, I was that 20-30cm wider than I wanted to be. That meant the rear tyre dropped over the curb and that time the car bottomed out because the car is so low.
“The moment we touch a curb we lose contact to the ground and that means there’s nothing holding us back from spinning. I saw other guys from other teams have similar issues except they were able to catch it and unfortunately I wasn't.”
Haas announced shortly after the crash that Schumacher would not race on Sunday and while it seemed clear the decision was due to the driver’s health, he revealed that it was to make sure the team could compete properly in Australia.
“Combination of car preservation - we want to be able to race in Melbourne,” he explained. “If something else happened in this race we might not be able to. I want to get those points in Melbourne.”
He also suggested that after a few big crashes on the circuit, with concrete walls and blind corners, changes might need to be introduced for next year.
“I think there’s things we have to have a look at. I don’t know what will happen in the future and we have to have a serious discussion about it.”
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