Toto Wolff believes Mick Schumacher was mismanaged at Haas, and insists had his father Michael been around, Guenther Steiner wouldn’t have dared to treat him the way he did.
Mick Schumacher spent two seasons (2021 and 2022) at Haas driving under the management of Guenther Steiner, and while the young German spent his first season driving a vicious car, so vicious that we have always expressed concern regarding the wellbeing of the son of the great Michael Schumacher.
Mick also had Nikita Mazepin as a teammate in his first season at the U.S. Formula 1 team, barely a proper reference for a rookie driver in the pinnacle of motorsport.
In 2022, Schumacher was error prone and struggle to keep up with his new teammate Kevin Magnussen, but being a former Formula 3 and Formula 2 Champion, the rationale is that the German is much better than what we’ve seen.
We have always maintained that Haas is not a team to nurture talent, hence it was a mistake by the Schumacher camp to place Mick there in his rookie season, while Alfa Romeo would have been a better option under the mentorship of then team boss Fred Vasseur, but that mistake is also shared by former Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto as Mick was part of the Ferrari drivers’ academy.
Toto Wolff took Schumacher in after Haas showed him the door at the end of the 2022 F1 season, and put him in a reserve role, hoping to build his confidence once again with the hope of putting him back on the F1 grid.
The Austrian insists Schumacher will drive should any of the team’s regular drivers be unable to race for one reason or another.
Speaking to Blick‘s Roger Benoit, Wolff said: “If one of our drivers gets Covid or gets injured, Mick is in the Mercedes! Period, end of discussion!
“We’ll try to provide an old car for him as soon as possible,” he added, revealing Mercedes are putting together a driving program for Schumacher in older Silver F1 machinery.
As for Schumacher’s days at Haas, Wolff did not hold back; he said: “All I can say is that his parents did nothing wrong in their upbringing.
“And I maintain that if Michael had accompanied his son during the two Haas years, Steiner wouldn’t have dared to handle Mick like that!” the Mercedes boss insisted.
Netflix’s Drive to Survive shed some light on Mick Schumacher’s final season at Haas, and while the series is known to over dramatizing the events, it was clear the Guenther Steiner and the Haas Management did not really deal with a struggling driver the way they should have.