Former Formula 1 driver Christian Danner has affirmed that Mick Schumacher has to stop making unforced errors to avoid incurring further unnecessary expenditure for his Haas team.
Schumacher was out-qualified for the fourth time this season by team-mate Kevin Magnussen in Monaco, and he spent several laps battling away with the Alfa Romeo of Zhou Guanyu.
While following the young Chinese driver into the swimming pool section though, he seemed to run over a damp patch from the torrential rain earlier in the race, and he slammed straight into the barrier, snapping off the rear of the car.
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He was thankfully unharmed, but the car will be going straight in the bin, meaning another significant bill for Haas, who might already be running fairly tight to the $140 million budget.
Danner has no problem with the raw pace of the 23-year-old, but imagines that team principal Guenther Steiner will be growing impatient with his driver’s errors.
“He can keep up in terms of speed, but things can’t go on like this with the incidents,” he told Sport1.
“He’s causing millions in damage, and a team like Haas can spend that money more wisely.”
“He needs to find the solution for himself – no advice would help him.
“But he has to finish a race without incident. Gunther will be reading the riot act.”
Steiner had some relatively stinging remarks for the German in his race review.
“We obviously saw what happened,” said the Italian.
“It’s not very satisfactory having a big crash again. We need to see how we move forward from here.”
Schumacher feels as though he had good pace in the race, but the smallest of errors put pay to his afternoon.
“I’m feeling alright,” he said when asked about his physical condition.
“Obviously it’s very annoying.
“I think in terms of pace we were definitely there, it’s just a matter of keeping it on track and unfortunately I just wasn’t able to do that.
“The pace felt strong and it felt like we were able to attack and push. Unfortunately we just ended up being a bit too wide, maybe a matter of 10 centimetres at the end.
“That’s enough to lose all grip that you thought you had and unfortunately then the result is as it happened.”
The 2020 Formula 2 champion has every faith though that he can turn the tide on what has been a difficult season thus far.
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“The season is still long – the tide can turn very quickly, I’ve shown what I can do before and I’m sure we’ll show it again this year,” added Schumacher.
Schumacher has now gone 29 race entries without scoring a single point after the American outfit failed to register a top 10 finish last year.