When dealing with a difficult-to-drive car, Mick Schumacher’s race engineer Gary Gannon admits that Haas “cannot properly assess” the pace of both drivers.
11 races this season and Haas is the only team that still finished.
Schumacher has the team’s best result, a P12 at the British Grand Prix, and generally appears to be the quicker of the team’s two drivers.
He leads the qualifying battle against Nikita Mazepin, while finishing ahead of his teammate in seven of the nines they both completed.
But Haas cannot say how fast it actually is.
“We can’t really judge the ultimate pace of the two drivers because the car is difficult to drive,” Gannon told The Race. “Sometimes we have to drive less downforce to make the track more efficient and that pushes us to the limit. In a place like Silverstone, the void opens.
“I think we haven’t had a perfect qualifying so I think he’s always improving and trying to get closer to the perfect lap. It’s still quite early in the season, however, and we’re getting closer to that perfect lap. The expectation was that it would take him a year to get close to that perfect lap and he is improving a lot.
“For example Silverstone. Again, it was unsatisfactory because of our position, but he has improved with every run. So if he improves with every run and there are no major mistakes, he is getting the best out of the car.
“It’s hard not to exaggerate when you’re trying to find a big jump in lap time to threaten the cars in front. Qualifying failed.”
Mick thinks … 
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But one thing Haas can say about Schumacher is that he has a great work ethic. Gannon says his driver takes every opportunity to learn.
And that was a steep turn in his first season in Formula 1.
“Because Mick learns so well and does his homework, he will improve a lot if you give him another chance, if he made a mistake or missed a chance, or if we didn’t give him the right aerobalance,” said the former Marussia engineer.
“With someone like Mick, the second chances are really great and can take a big step. We always walk away from qualifying and say, “There’s so much here and so much there,” but if you show him all the things we need to do better and give him one more chance, he’ll do it. So he has a clear idea of where we can make profits and how we can achieve them. “
He added, “The surprising thing is the scenarios he’s never seen before. Before the season started, we had a huge list of the experiences we’ve had over the years with Kevin, Romain and the other riders and we tried to go through all of that and present it to him.
“He takes in all kinds of information, he’s a really good, fast learner, but still we run into scenarios in the race that he has never seen before and doesn’t know what to expect. Then you say ‘ah, if I had told him everything would have gone better’ because sometimes you only have this moment to take advantage of a situation.
“Well, there have been a few of those, but in general, if we prepare Mick for something, he’s really good. As with all the details of his race management, he was already very aware of what had to happen, but he just learns a new management scenario every race.
“We don’t have to ask him to do things like the tasks he has to do in the car. For him they all become automatic, which is great. “
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