Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto claims Mick Schumacher echoes his father in how he works with his team.
Having joined the Scuderia’s Academy program at the start of the year, earlier this month saw the 20-year-old drive the 2019 Formula 1 car for the first time at a test in Bahrain.
Before that, however, Binotto revealed how Schumacher had been building the working relationship at Ferrari since becoming a junior driver.
“The very first time I saw him after many years in Maranello – when he came back if you looked at him, I don’t think he looks very similar to Michael,” he told Crash.net.
“But the way he’s behaving is very similar and the way he approaches the exercise and the way he’s interested in the car, discussing it with the technicians.
“So even in Maranello, you are looking after him, but he’s always in the workshop looking at the car, speaking with the mechanics, and I think that’s very similar to his father.”
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His outing in Bahrain would be pretty respectable, particularly on a strange day when running disrupted by rain in the desert.
“To assess the performance, I think it is very difficult because first, the weather conditions were very bad on that day and because at the end I think that the objective was not really to assess the performance,” Binotto noted.
“It was his very first day in a Formula 1 car. It was more important for him still in the learning phase and day-by-day is facing a completely new challenge in his F2 season.”
And from the angle of building confidence in the Ferrari F1 car, the team boss believes Schumacher did well.
“I think what was certainly positive was the way he approached the exercise,” he explained.
“The approach to the day of testing, never pushing to the limit, trying to improve run-by-run, learning the car, learning the team, and I think in that respect he did a very good job.
“He was very well focussed, concentrated and tried to do the proper job and learn. I think that’s the most you may expect on such a day.”
This weekend will see Mick back in an F2 car for the third and fourth rounds of the season on the challenging streets of Baku.