Mick Schumacher admits his Q3 appearance beat expectations at Haas in Dutch Grand Prix qualifying.
Under pressure to keep his seat for 2023, the German delivered an impressive lap in Q2 to beat both Alpines and Pierre Gasly to make the top 10.
Schumacher then benefitted from a hydraulics issue for Lance Stroll and beat Yuki Tsunoda to claim P8, nine places ahead of teammate Kevin Magnussen.
“It feels good,” he told Sky Sports post-session.
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“Obviously outperforming our predictions is always great – we saw ourselves out in Q2, but to go through to Q3 and repeat the lap time prior to Q2 was definitely decent.
“To start P8 is a great starting point and hopefully some points tomorrow.”
Explaining his improved pace, Schumacher credited a stable weekend in the garage.
“You want to try just to be consistent,” he said. “Don’t make major changes but actually just fine-tune it if you need it, and that’s what we did.
“We didn’t do massive changes. I think it was just a bit of fine-tuning.
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— Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team) September 3, 2022
“Luckily we started the weekend with a great set-up and we didn’t have to do big changes, which always helps and especially builds confidence over what you have under your bum and makes you hopefully faster on track.”
Looking ahead to the race, Schumacher predicted one key factor that will determine if he can add to his points from Silverstone and Spielberg.
“We’ll definitely have to look at how our tyre management will go,” he said.
“On the other hand, we have some cars behind us which are probably a similar pace to what we are, so we just try and keep them behind us and make them fight with the others and destroy their tyres and we can keep our tyres alive.”