The voluntary departure from Formula 1 will have a liberating effect. Because it has been hinted at for a long time: Mick Schumacher received enough information this year that he was no longer wanted as a regular driver for a racing team. The son of the record world champion had to take four severe blows in the neck. After his time as a driver at Haas ended at the end of 2022, Mercedes hired him as a reserve driver and praised the German for his work in the simulator, helping to trim the moody car on track here and there overnight. Many thanks too. But team boss Toto Wolff appointed Kimi Antonelli as the successor to Lewis Hamilton, who moved to Ferrari. The French racing team Alpine, for which Schumacher was successful in the World Endurance Championship and in Le Mans and will also be behind the wheel in 2025, is relying on the newcomer Jack Doohan in Formula 1 after a comparison test under different conditions. Sauber, soon to be an Audi factory team, believes that the 20-year-old Brazilian Gabriel Bortoleto is the better solution for filling the vacant cockpit in 2025. The image of the crash pilot When Williams threw out the overwhelmed American Logan Sargeant at the end of August, team boss James Vowles signed the Argentine Franco Colapinto until the end of the season: so that the inexperienced player can collect a lot of points in the valuable constructors’ competition. First loser in all cases: Mick Schumacher. He has now retired from Mercedes as a test driver. His Formula 1 dream is history. A frustrating experience. Because it cannot be explained solely with Vowles’ reference to Schumacher Jr. miss what is special about Hamilton, Max Verstappen or his father. This can be said about most pilots without getting too close to them. In addition to the extremely complex, almost incomprehensible mechanisms that determine driver selection beyond the Hamilton category, Schumacher was heavily burdened with the image of being a crash pilot. It dates back to his time at Haas, where the novice beat his teammate in the first year and ground, but in the difficult second year he did not enjoy the confidence that an inexperienced pilot needs in order to be able to develop his potential. Instead, team boss Günther Steiner publicly castigated him; an effective distraction from the weaknesses of the racing team. The advice of Red Bull’s highly esteemed talent developer, Franz Tost, to invest in Schumacher went unheeded. More on the topic The fact that Colapinto destroyed three Williams on the last two racing weekends and presumably destroyed more money than he will win for the team is not proof for a wrong choice. But proof of how necessary a minimum amount of patience is with young people. Otherwise you won’t find out what’s inside them. The Japanese Yuki Tsunoda, for example, produced a lot of scrap at the Red Bull subsidiary. After three years and 82 races, he was promoted to the side of the best driver of the moment: Max Verstappen.
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