Mick Schumacher has revealed how battling with the likes of Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton has helped him to learn from their approach. After Haas spent the majority of 2021 at the back of the field, the team have made progress in 2022, allowing Schumacher and teammate Kevin Magnussen to occasionally duel with the front-runners. Schumacher enjoyed a close fight with Hamilton over the Austrian Grand Prix weekend, one week after he achieved his first ever points in F1 at Silverstone following a feisty scrap with Verstappen for P7. It was ultimately Verstappen who finished ahead but, in an interview with RacingNews365.com , Schumacher has explained how these battles have proved to be invaluable experiences for him.
Schumacher learning from battles with front-runners
"It's helpful in the way that I get to learn how they race," Schumacher said. "I don't know how long they will be racing for. For sure, Max will be racing for a few more years. "It's good to know how he approaches a fight, like a one-to-one battle. So it's great experience, and hopefully I'll have a lot more of those in the future." The fact that it is Verstappen who he is going up against on those occasions is not something that Schumacher actively thinks about at the time, though. "No, at that point it's honestly just another driver," the German continued. "[There's no] difference between them. [But] if they are a lot faster – like if it was a Ferrari or if it was a Red Bull, and they have no problem – it's very hard for us to fight, so it makes no real sense because we all just use our tyres."
Schumacher enjoying opportunity to fight again
After winning the Formula 2 championship in 2020, Schumacher made the step up to F1 in 2021, but was unable to get involved in many battles due to Haas' uncompetitive car. The son of seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher has relished having the opportunity to go wheel-to-wheel again. "It's always been something that I enjoyed doing, and I've had enough of that in my junior days," he explained. "And, obviously, coming back into that this year is great." In terms of the differences between racing in Formula 1 and the junior categories, Schumacher added: "Racing is very different compared to how it was in Formula 2, for example. "You have a lot more tools to play with, you have a lot more things you can change while racing, and if you don't change them, you might lose out on the battle. "So it's really a matter of getting everything right for the situation, and basically that you understand what you have to do if you want to overtake somebody."
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