F1 News: Mick Schumacher Rues Strategy After Pointless Spanish GP
Saturday Qualifying saw Mick Schumacher recover impressively from reliability issues in FP3 and put himself into Q3 for the first time in his F1 career.
Schumacher built on his solid qualifying performance at the race start, climbing up to sixth place at the end of the first lap.
However, his race began to collapse after this impressive start, lacking the pace to maintain this position at the top of the midfield and slipping to the lower points.
Still, Schumacher was in a solid position to score his first points in F1. His pace was comparable to the likes of Tsunoda behind him, and the #47 had the benefit of track position at the end of the first stint.
Haas's strategy, however, played its part in Schumacher finishing outside the top 10 and leaving Spain empty-handed.
Schumacher gave his analysis post-race:
"We knew it was going to be tight with the two-stop, and it didn't quite pay off to stay out.
It's something to learn, something to understand and move on from here."
It would be unfair to say that strategy was the only reason Haas failed to score points, with Magnussen's first lap incident immediately dampening the American team's prospects.
Throwing away points has become an unwelcome habit for Haas and a costly one in F1's highly competitive midfield. Driver error prevented Haas from scoring points at Miami, whilst the alternate strategy compromised Kevin Magnussen's result at the Saudi GP.
All parties at Haas have made costly mistakes at various points this year, but if the team is to end the season content with their points haul, these unforced errors must be eliminated.