Ferrari Driver Academy member Mick Schumacher was left frustrated in the qualifying session for the 2022 Mexican Grand Prix on Saturday, due to a track limits infringement that meant his best lap time was deleted, which did not allow him to move on to Q2 at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.
The Haas driver set a solid lap time of 1m19.965s in the final part of Q1, which moved him up to P6 at that stage and would have been more than enough for a Q2 presence for Mick. Unfortunately, the time was quickly deleted by the race stewards for cutting track limits on the apex of Turn 2. Mick Schumacher finished outside the top 15 and as a result his qualifying session ended at that point.
The Ferrari junior confirmed that he had been “aggressive” when approaching that part of the track, but at the same time pointed out that he’d used the bollard on the apex as a reference – and felt that it should have been located in such a way that drivers couldn’t be deemed to cut the corner if they attempted to brush past it.
“I knew it was aggressive. But in my eyes it was going to be enough. If the bollard is there, it’s there for a reason. I took reference off that. Unfortunately, I think that’s a point that we’ll probably have to address, because with these cars obviously these days, it’s hard to see. If we have a bollard, it would be great if the bollard was positioned in such a manner that you’re not able to go over [track limits]. That would definitely help a lot all of us. So, yeah, quite unfortunate. The difference of cutting it that much or not, it’s probably less than a tenth.” – Mick Schumacher explained.
“We treated qualifying a little bit like a test,” he said when asked by about the Mexican session. “We changed rear wing, changed floor, changed front wing, because we’ve had some suspicions about what we were running. So the car did change around a lot. And we had to really go a completely different direction on the front flap to get the balance to be similar. So there’s some stuff to look at tonight.”
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Asked if the Haas car was better in its revised form, he conceded that it was hard to tell.
“It might be, but we were just so far off that we never really got back into the right spot. You only get so many chances in qualifying.”
Ferrari junior had one final fast run in Q1, but his tyres were already used at that stage, while things were made even more difficult by the fact that other drivers overtook him on track before he could start the final flying lap. Mick pointed out that violated the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ about not passing other cars on preparation laps.
“It was always going to be tough,” he said. “But I think more than that, it was also the gentleman’s agreement that wasn’t kept, by like three or four cars. Which was silly, really. But it’s the way it is. It definitely hurt the preparation of the lap, which meant I couldn’t warm up the brakes just as much as I wanted it to, and going to Turn 1 with the question mark.” – the Ferrari junior concluded.
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