The reigning Formula 2 champion Schumacher has not had the easiest rookie season so far, as he couldn’t get higher than 16 in the lackluster Haas VF-21 F1 car.
With Haas deciding not to do any development work before the 2022 rule changes, it is unlikely that Schumacher’s fortune will improve this year.
Although Schumacher has not qualified higher than 18th so far, he is nonetheless confident that he can get into the top 15 this season and advance into the second quarter.
When asked if his preseason target of targeting the second quarter was still met given Haas’ poor form, Schumacher said he believed it was a realistic ambition for his debut campaign.
“It’s an absolutely realistic goal,” said Schumacher in Barcelona. “Of course I would be unhappy if it weren’t for that this year. We’re still pushing for it.
“There will be tracks that might get in our way more. I think, considering that this track isn’t one of our strongest, we still managed to obviously produce a very good lap time.”
“We were pretty close to Kimi [Raikkonen]looking in retrospect. So yeah, I think we can be very happy and hopeful for a Q2 in the next of 18 races so hopefully we’ll make it. “
Also read:
Alfa Romeo and Williams are Haas’ most obvious targets if Schumacher and teammate Nikita Mazepin are to make it through the second quarter this season.
In Imola Alfas, Antonio Giovinazzi Schumacher qualified by only one and a half tenths. In Portugal and Spain, Nicholas Latifi and Raikkonen were the German’s closest rivals.
When asked by Motorsport.com how much time he still had on the table in Barcelona in the first quarter, Schumacher replied that he could have driven two tenths faster.
That roughly corresponded to Schumacher’s deficit compared to Raikkonen and gave him the confidence that he could move up several positions with a clean qualifying round.
“I think I probably did it this lap [I lost] probably by two tenths, so that would be equivalent to what Kimi did, “he explained.
“So we can be very happy. It’s just a matter of merging these lap times and reducing the dispersion of the sectors.
“I think we are generally on the right track and then we can definitely look forward to it [Saturday’s] Performance.”
The post Achieving the second quarter in 2021 was still a “completely realistic goal” first appeared on monter-une-startup.
