Mick Schumacher racked up a damage bill of more than $3 million last year before being dropped from Formula 1, according to Haas team principal Guenther Steiner.
Steiner revealed the figure in his upcoming book Surviving to Drive: A Year Inside Formula 1, a diarised retelling of the team’s 2022 season, which is due for release in May.
The American team’s 2022 campaign was one of the more eventful in its short but colourful seven-year F1 history, triggered in part by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Haas was forced to tear up its sponsorship agreement with Russian chemicals company Uralkali, whose part owner, Dmitry Mazepin, is close to Vladimir Putin. Dmitry’s son Nikita was also dismissed from the team’s driver roster as a result.
Former Haas driver Kevin Magnussen was drafted back in on the eve of the first race, but the Dane’s lack of seat time proved to be the least of the team’s on-track problems.
Mick Schumacher, in his second year in the sport, was struggling to step up from his rookie season and establish himself as an F1 mainstay.
Two enormous crashes in the first seven races, including in qualifying in Saudi Arabia and the race in Monaco, immediately put his future into doubt with the cash-strapped team.
A modest mid-year resurgence, including career-first points at the British Grand Prix, wasn’t enough on its own to save his career, and a third large crash during practice at the soaking-wet Japanese Grand Prix sealed his fate.
According to extracts from Surviving to Drive published by The Times, the third crash, which broke the chassis, resulted in US$700,000 (A$1.05 million) of damages, tipping Schumacher’s damage bill to US$2 million (A$3 million) for the year.
“It happened on the foking in-lap,” Steiner wrote of the Japanese crash. “On the in-lap!
“Sure, it was very wet out there on the track, but nobody else managed to write off a car while they were driving back to the pits.
“We lose a car after five minutes and now have to build another. I cannot have a driver who I am not confident can take a car around safely on a slow lap.
“It’s just foking ridiculous. How many people could we employ with $700,000? And I have to now find that money.”
Speaking after announcing Nico Hülkenberg as Schumacher’s replacement, Steiner admitted that the younger German’s inexperience in Formula 1 counted against him inside a small team that didn’t have the resources to foster his progression.
“[Schumacher is missing] the experience of multi years in F1, and [he’s] never having been with another team other than us,” he said.
“Experience takes time to make, and at the moment we don‘t have time because we want to move forward.
“It‘s not Mick’s fault that we are where we are. We have ourselves to blame.”
Schumacher has sought refuge with Mercedes, where he’s taken up the role of reserve driver this season in the hope of rejoining the grid in 2024. He said earlier this year that in the off season “a few people have already mentioned that there‘s interest” in his services for next year.
Steiner has become a cult hero in Formula 1 thanks to the Drive to Survive docuseries. The title of his ghostwritten memoirs of the 2022 season are a clear tip of the hat to the show despite the Italian never having watched an episode.
“I’ve never watched Drive to Survive,” he wrote. “It’s not because I’m against it. If I was I wouldn’t appear on it. I think it’s done an incredible job for Formula 1.
“My fear is that I won’t like certain aspects of how I behave and will try to change how I do things. I know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea but I’m okay with who I am. If you don’t like it, tough shit.
“Some people still believe that Drive to Survive is staged — or that some of it is staged — and let me assure you it isn’t. You can’t rehearse the shit I come out with.”
According to The Times, Steiner uses the word ‘fok’ — the phonetic spelling of the way he says the four-letter expletive beginning with the same letter — 304 times in the book, an average of once per page.
