Haas’ Mick Schumacher has conceded that the Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet does not lend itself particularly well to the American side’s strengths.
Schumacher’s form has massively picked up of late; he has scored points in both of the last two rounds in Silverstone and Spielberg, out-performing team-mate Kevin Magnussen in both.
We even saw his angry side over the course of the Austrian Grand Prix weekend after he was not allowed to pass the Dane in the sprint, so the German is a driver on the up having gone 31 races entries without a win.
The Banbury-based side are starting to turn their attention to developing towards next season having managed eight points finishes this season between Schumacher and Magnussen, so there is not a lot of scope left to work on their 2022 challenger.
However, there is still progress taking place on the VF-22, but it is difficult to set a car up for the straight-line speed of Paul Ricard when it is fundamentally lacking in that area in the first place.
“We’re always trying to improve our car or we’re always trying to adapt our car to different places,” explained Schumacher.
“I think we understand our package pretty well but we’re still trying to maximise it further and learn more from it and see how we can make it quicker.
“I don’t think Paul Ricard is a special track to do that, it’s a track like any other track.
“We have fewer quick corners there – there’s just one quick corner – which is usually flat anyways in any downforce, so it’s a matter of exploiting the speeds on a straight which we haven’t been great at this year.
“I imagine it’s going to be tough but in a Formula 1 race there is always a lot of action, sometimes it can be quiet, and we are where we are, and sometimes there’s a lot of action and you can get through.
“We’ll just have to wait and see how the weekend develops and how we get on.”
As for the layout of the circuit, it was originally designed as a test track and, as such, there are over 100 different variations that lend themselves to testing different aspects of the car.
This means that there is plenty of run-off on almost every corner, so Schumacher divulged that the drivers can get caught out trying to figure out what part of the racetrack they should be on.
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“For sure it’s a track where usually you have the opportunity to push quite hard just because you know that you can go over a certain limit sometimes,” he added.
“It’s one of those tracks where you can push harder than other tracks just because you know you have the run off and the chances of you getting near a wall is quite slim.
“Obviously, if you do a mistake, it’s quite bad for the tyres so you obviously don’t want to do it in an important session, but definitely it’s a track that is quite interesting.
“It can be confusing at times due to all the different lines, so it’s not just viewers that get confused, it can also be the drivers too.”
Schumacher is 15th in the Drivers’ Standings head into the 12th round of the season, while Kevin Magnussen is 10 points up ahead in 11th.