F1 News: Haas Owner Casts Doubt On Mick Schumacher Future - "He's wrecked a lot of cars"
Haas are yet to announce whether Mick Schumacher will keep his place on the team for the 2023 season.
Gene Haas, the owner of the team, has said that Schumacher "costs a fortune" with the cars that he has "wrecked". Haas have not confirmed anything yet about who will be driving for them on the grid next year, although Nico Hulkenberg has also been mentioned as a possibility.
Schumacher has scored 12 points so far during the 2022 season but has in the process had two major crashes and received a warning from team principal, Guenther Steiner, after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Haas has explained to the Associated Press:
"I think Mick has got a lot of potential, but you know he costs a fortune and he’s wrecked a lot of cars that have cost us a lot of money that we just don’t have,"
"Now, if you bring us some points, and you are [Max] Verstappen [winning races] and you wreck cars, we’ll deal with it.
"But when you are in the back and you wreck cars, that’s very difficult.
They continued:
"If he wins the next [race] he’s in [for 2023]. Somewhere in between, there is a grey area.
"We started off the year with resounding success [including fifth for Magnussen in Bahrain] and I think the middle season wasn’t too good, and we just seem to fall back into our usual way of running.
"We’ve got to get out of that, but Formula 1 is so tough.
The team went on to explain that the grid is much closer together which is making it much more tough on the drivers.
"When I started [in racing] there was six seconds between the leaders and the back and you had a 107% rule [to filter out the no-hopers].
"Now we’re all within two seconds, so it’s gotten a lot tougher and there are no bad teams anymore."