Ferrari junior and Haas driver Mick Schumacher has admitted that his “weird” crash on the streets of Monte Carlos two weeks ago in the Monaco Grand Prix was caused by the fact that he slightly went offline and onto wet patches on the still drying circuit. The incident, which led to the Monaco Grand Prix being red-flagged, the gearbox was broken off the back of his Haas car after the impact with the barrier in the middle of the Swimming Pool complex, as his car then slid into the Tecpro barrier at the exit.
Due to this crash, Mick Schumacher can no longer use the gearbox which was ripped off the car. At the same time his chassis is currently under repair at the Haas factory, but thankfully his Ferrari engine could be saved. After the incident, the Ferrari Driver Academy member could not explain why he lost control so suddenly in the high-speed section of the Monaco circuit, as his Haas race engineer felt that he may have suggested on the radio that he might have slightly touched the barrier immediately beforehand, and therefore broken something.
Yet after thoroughly analyzing the data and reviewing the incident, Mick Schumacher is now aware that he had gone wide at Tabac and cooled his right hand Pirelli tyres on a wet patch. A few moments he hit another at the Swimming Pool when he ran just 10cm wider than previously.
“Basically I mean the whole track was quite damp in parts,” the Ferrari junior explained, when asked about the Monaco crash and what the data had shown – “And some others were quite dry. We came a bit wide in Turn 12 [Tabac] which cooled down the right hand side. And then when going through the chicane, I actually took it easy for the circumstances, for the conditions, that there were. And I just misplaced it a bit, and was basically 10 centimetres on the wet patch, which then triggers a double wheelspin in that case, because we have so much power. And that kind of then just threw the car into a half-spin, I’m trying to correct it, and it goes into the wall.” – he added.
Mick Schumacher admitted that he had no prior warning that he might lose the car in that section:
“No, it came out of the blue. And I spoke to other people. And, you know, most of the feedback that I got said it does look really weird. So obviously, we can’t check if anything broke, actually. But data suggests not, so just seems like a wet patch. It was really odd, because also the accident itself wasn’t in any ways hard. To have it split in two again is quite unfortunate, because obviously it’s a lot of damage in that case.” – he admitted.
The unfortunate incident in Monte Carlo took place just a few weeks after Mick Schumacher suffered a big accident in the qualifying session for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix which caused made it impossible for him to take part in the race on Sundat. The Ferrari junior feels he needed to take risks to have a better chance of getting the results that his Haas car is capable of this season. At the same time, Mick is aware that he has to learn how to balance the two aspects.
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“Especially in the midfield this year is so tight, so it’s just a matter of being 10 centimetres out of place, and things go very wrong. I mean, nobody thought about the kerb beforehand in Jeddah for example, it being a trigger to these accidents. In Monaco, obviously conditions were quite tough. So yeah, there’s obviously the evaluation of risk and reward. And we try to obviously be in the points, and therefore we have to go into some sort of risk. But yeah, it’s definitely something where I’ve just got to learn a bit more, and understand a bit more. I guess you always as a driver try and risk, and get the benefits of it. I mean the midfield is so tightly packed that if you really don’t go into the risk, you end up anyways P15 or lower. And that’s not where we want to be, we want to be in the top 10. So you do have to go to a certain amount of risk. And it’s up to me to decide and find the right margin. But there are other circumstances also playing a role in that. So it’s just a matter of dialling that in.” – the Haas driver continued.
Mick Schumacher also pointed out that he would be less in the spotlight if he had already scored a few points in the current Formula 1 campaign: “We’ve had moments before where we had very good races, but weren’t rewarded for it. And if I did let’s say get rewarded for it, I think we would have a bit of a different conversation right now about these things. So it’s just a matter of time, really.” – the Ferrari junior concluded.
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