Haas boss confirms "Mick Schumacher has an advantage for 2023 F1 seat"

With each passing week the Formula 1 drivers market outlines the line up for the 2023 World Championship thanks to important movements.

The latest official announcements concerned Alpine – who confirmed Pierre Gasly’s arrival in Enstone – and AlphaTauri, who chose Nyck De Vries to replace the Frenchman. Now there are only a few seats left to assign, and one of them is from the Haas team.

The American side will be able to count on Kevin Magnussen’s experience and speed also for the 2023 Formula One season. The big question mark, however, is linked to the name of the driver who will join him.

Ferrari junior Mick Schumacher is finishing his second campaign in Formula 1 and his second year with Haas. After a rather difficult start, despite a solid VF-22 car in terms of speed and performance in the first third of the 2022 F1 season, the German was able to find a good balance between risk and performance in recent months.

Over the course of the summer, the results and races were much more solid for the Ferrari Driver Academy member and Haas team principal Guenther Steiner also acknowledged this change. He also admitted that Mick has an advantage over all the other names on the list from which the American team will choose the driver who will join Kevin Magnussen for the 2023 championship.

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“If the driver who is currently with the team has an advantage for the following year? Absolutely yes. If you already work with someone for two years it is an advantage. If you can have someone you have been working with for two years already it is better than hiring a new person, because as I’ve always said, you don’t have the time to learn.” – explained the Haas boss, who then added: “That’s why we brought Kevin back to the team too, because he had already been with us. He was away for a year, but he knew everyone and this is always an advantage when you have to start from a certain point.”

In the first part of the season Mick Schumacher made a series of mistakes that led Guenther Steiner himself to say: “It is not possible to continue in this way”. At Suzuka, however, the Italian manager said he was satisfied with how the German reacted and managed to find the compromise between risk and result.

“I can’t say I’m not satisfied, because he didn’t do any damage to the car or anything. He was also in the points zone for most of the time. What we have seen is an improvement that led him to score points in this second part of the season. If a driver doesn’t learn and develop, he can’t score points.” – the Haas team principal concluded.