09 August 2023 , 20:53
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Toto Wolff has heaped praise upon "great guy" Mick Schumacher for his work to help set up and develop the Mercedes W14 so far this season.
The German is reserve driver to Lewis Hamilton and George Russell this year. It's not the role he wanted – Schumacher would much prefer to be racing against the British drivers.
But he was axed by Haas at the end of last season, when every other team had already completed its 2023 line-up. So his best option was to accept Wolff's offer to provide backup to his main men.
And that's what he has been doing. But arguably his most important work has been in the simulator to help with the development direction of the team's temperamental car.
Wolff has nothing but praise for the 24-year-old. "Mick is just such a great guy. He's not only a good racing driver but he has all the right values in place," said the Austrian in the team's mid-season review video.
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Not only has Schumacher helped to develop the W14, but his simulator work has also helped the team with setting it up for each track. That is one of the team's biggest challenges on any given race weekend, given how much of a "diva" the car can be, to use a phrase uttered by Wolff himself.
And the work he does in that respect was illustrated best at the British Grand Prix. After Friday practice, both Hamilton and Russell were unhappy with how the car felt and its one-lap pace, leaving them concerned for what qualifying the following day might hold.
But Schumacher came to the rescue. He worked until the early hours of the morning to help figure out what was needed and contributed to a better qualifying result than might have been the case. In another video, technical director James Allison described how the German helped to fix the "woeful" problem.
He said: "The engineers and Mick Schumacher are working late into the night till 2am trying to figure out how to get the best preparation of the car to be in good shape for a qualifying lap for that single push lap without changing the fundamental setup. So, [they were] only working on the things that you can change – the tyre pressures, the flap angles and so on.
"The things that you're allowed to change between qualifying and race, and therefore things that we can do without upsetting the fundamental setup of the car. Brilliant overnight work from that team, the result being that our single lap qualifying pace lifted right back up to being in the mix for a decent grid slot on the Saturday which is what set up our ability to have a good race on Sunday."