Mick Schumacher has been warned he needs to stop the “heavy” crashes which have become “too frequent” in recent races.
On Saturday, the Haas driver missed qualifying for the second time season after a 30G impact with the barriers at Turn 11 during final practice at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
This comes after Schumacher also crashed out in FP3 in Monaco and in Q1 at Circuit Paul Ricard, all accidents that have hit the American squad a little hard in the pocket.
“Mick in the last five races had quite a few big ones,” Haas chief Guenther Steiner said.
A hefty shunt for @SchumacherMick in FP3 saw the session red flagged
Thankfully, the @HaasF1Team driver has been given the all-clear by the medical centre #HungarianGP ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/qm1MupdB2N
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 31, 2021
“If you have a spin or something like this, that happens. But these accidents are quite heavy, it’s a lot of money, and for no good reason.
“So we have to work on it, to get better on that one.
“Obviously, the budget is the budget and you need to stick to it,” he noted. “You always have to have ideas how to get around it when you have these accidents.
“But at the moment, obviously we feel it, but we can still deal with it. But soon we will need to find new ways to overcome this because they’re getting a little bit too frequent and too heavy.”
Steiner was also disappointed that Schumacher seemingly didn’t learn from what happened in Monaco, when he crashed out at Casino Square in FP3, and was unable to qualify.
“Yeah, I actually think so, by now we should know where we stand,” he said.
“In FP3 you compromise yourself not taking part in qualifying and the risk is always there because it’s only two hours away from when you finish FP3 to qualifying.
“Obviously, they need to learn out of this. We had a few and that’s OK, but we need to get better at this.”
And while much of the attention has been on the spins and offs of teammate Nikita Mazepin earlier in the year, the Haas chief believes it might actually be Mick now making more errors.
“We make too many mistakes, that is the problem. Or I would say, in defence of Nikita, I shouldn’t use the plural, because in the last races he behaved very well,” he said.
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“He did very well. He didn’t do any damage or anything. And Mick, just the last races, we had some accidents, which we need to get better at.
“You always plan for accidents, especially with rookie drivers, but I think we have reached a point now where we need to work on it to have less accidents for the rest of the season,” Steiner stated.
“From our side, we just have to make plans how we spend our money. We know exactly what we are doing on parts and this but to deal with the drivers, it’s mainly just maybe sitting down and explain the big picture again, that sometimes you need to take risk but you take risk if there is opportunity.
“If there is no opportunity, I never take risks personally, because there’s nothing to be gained. And I think at the moment, we know that there is not a lot to be gained, especially not in FP3, and we shouldn’t take this risk in FP3.”