Michael Schumacher wanted to be by the side of his son Mick and manage him into Formula 1, according to ex-manager Willi Weber.
The 20-year-old is currently competing in his first season of F2 with Prema and recently tested the Ferrari F1 car for the first time in Bahrain as his rise up the motorsport ladder continues.
And while he has his father’s manager Sabine Khem there to help him, Weber, who managed Schumacher during his first F1 stint, believes Michael would have been very involved too.
“Michael was anxious to bring him into Formula 1 and to manage him, as I used to manage him,” he told Motorsport.com. “That would have been the end result of the whole story, he would have loved that.
“Michael knows everything. He knows which teams to talk to, he knows how it all works, because he made all the experiences himself.
“If Michael would still stand by his side, it would have a completely different symbolism to it.”
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As it is, the seven-time world champion is unfortunately still recovering from his skiing accident in late 2013 but Mick still has plenty of big hitters helping him on his path potentially to the top.
Of course, on the way, it has led to a lot of attention and another successful motorsport son, Carlos Sainz Jr., revealed some of the challenges that come with it.
“Especially when I was a kid, when I was go-karting, I felt that a lot of people were looking at me and at my results and the way I was going because of being the son of [Sainz],” the Spaniard told Crash.net.
“But it’s something that I got used to, although at the time it was tough. Then I just tried to take the positives from it and having a double world rally champion as a father I think it only made me a better driver today.
“But sometimes media attention is also not bad. I think he [Mick] is in a good place right now.”
The problem was, Sainz’s surname often made him the target of other young racers trying to get noticed.
“Kids are sometimes a bit mean and you want to beat that guy, ‘I want to beat the son of Carlos Sainz more than any other maybe because his father is watching or because more people are watching,’” he explained.
“My dad told me ‘you either bite or you get beaten’. When he told me that, I realised I had to start biting a bit more, or I will get beaten too often.
“Suddenly I started being a bit more aggressive and started earning a bit more respect. I didn’t realise but I was being a bit too nice, too friendly with everyone in wanting to get everyone’s approval and then I started being a bit more aggressive and it was better, definitely.”
