Why Haas F1 Team Gave up on Mick Schumacher after Just Two Seasons

• On Thursday, the Haas F1 Team announced that it was replacing 23-year-old Mick Schumacher with 35-year-old journeyman Nico Hulkenberg for the 2023 Formula 1 season.

• The son of F1 great Michael Schumacher, Mick has scored in just two races in two season and finished on the lead lap just eight times in his 21 races this season.

• Haas team principal Guenther Steiner conceded that Schumacher crashes this season “were part of” the decision but were not the main factor.

Mick Schumacher will not be racing in Formula 1 next season after Haas opted to sign the experienced Nico Hulkenberg in his place.

Schumacher has been a tricky driver to judge throughout his two seasons with Haas.

The erudite 23-year-old has shown enough to suggest he has the potential to become a solid midfield driver—maybe in a similar vein to Hulkenberg—but it is equally not a travesty that he will be left off the grid.

His scoreless rookie season in 2021 was spent stymied by lackluster machinery, and while he comfortably got the better of then-teammate Nikita Mazepin, Mazepin was not exactly a stellar benchmark. It nevertheless bought Schumacher a little more time to show what he could do, which was a positive situation given his illustrious surname.

Schumacher’s 2022 has been mixed at best. There were points in Britain (finished eighth) and Austria (finished sixth) and more should have followed elsewhere but for reliability issues and strategic missteps. His record against experienced teammate Kevin Magnussen has improved. He suggested recently that changes made around the Canadian GP—the precise details of which he was reluctant to divulge—led to a sizeable step.

Schumacher has finished on the lead lap just eight times in his 21 races this season. And, while teammate Magnussen managed to score Haas first pole last week at Interlagos, Schumacher qualified 20th in the same session.

His 2022 season included a handful of violent accidents, most notably in Saudi Arabia and Monaco, that were expensive for Haas. A post-flag accident in the wet in Japan was particularly looked down upon by management.

And uunlike, for example, when a young Charles Leclerc was at Sauber or young George Russell at Williams, there were very few ‘wow’ moments—if any—for Schumacher on track that suggested Schumacher warranted a loftier seat than Haas or even an extension at Haas. Long-time backers Ferrari have no room at the inn until 2025, and rival teams were not lining up to chase his signature.

When asked whether Schumacher had fallen short of expectations, a diplomatic Haas team principal Guenther Steiner said: “It’s difficult to answer that one because what is the expectation? But maybe we see things in the team now, which we need to fix in the team, where we can do better with somebody else. Take aside his performance and so on. It’s more like we need to bring the whole team up, not only the driver.

Steiner conceded that Schumacher’s crashes “were part of” the decision but were not the main factor.

“Mick improved a lot this season,” Steiner said. “You all saw it, I don’t have to tell you that one, and at some stage it was … and that’s why it took us so long, you know? We didn’t take this decision, as people think, before the summer, it took us this long to decide what is best for the team, as I always said. He drove hard and good in some races.”

Haas, after trying an all-rookie lineup as recently as 2021 when it went with Schumacher and Mazepin, now says it wants experience—and it was this which Schumacher, with only two seasons under his belt, lacked.

“I would say Mick doesn’t have the experience Nico has got, you know,” said Steiner. “And we needed experience to bring the team forward because I don’t want to say the driver wasn’t ready for the future, the team also needs to be a lot better for the future to get better.

"I’m not blaming it on Mick that we are where we are, but in general the team… in 2018 we made good progress the first years, we looked at that one as well to move forward and then we stagnated in ’19 and then in ’20 we went down. So we need to go forward again and that’s the best with experienced people and drivers which have done this before, which can bring experiences into our team which they have made in other teams.”

Despite the rumor circulating the paddock for some months that this move was inevitable, Haas only finalized Hulkenberg’s contract on Wednesday, with Steiner informing Schumacher of his exit later the same day.

Schumacher described the outcome as “very disappointing” but thanked “both Haas and Ferrari for giving me this opportunity.”

“Those years together have helped me to mature both technically and personally," Schumacher said. "And especially when things got difficult, I realized how much I love this sport. It was at times bumpy, but I steadily improved, learned a lot and now know for sure that I deserve a place in Formula 1.

“The subject is anything but closed for me. Setbacks only make you stronger. My fire burns for Formula 1 and I will fight hard to return to the starting grid.”