Both Haas drivers make Q3 in Barcelona
Kevin Magnussen (P8) and Mick Schumacher (P10) showed impressive pace in qualifying at the Spanish GP
Haas-Ferrari managed an impressive qualifying session at the Spanish Grand Prix last Saturday. Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher advanced to the final round of 10, otherwise known as “Q3,” an unprecedented accomplishment for the team.
2021 was a throw-away season for the only American Formula 1 Team, Haas F1, as they failed to score a single point in 22 races, and the VF-21 was the worst car on the grid. Fast forward to Round 6 of the 2022 season, and the team has already collected 15 points, which makes them 8th at the moment in the Constructors’ Championship.
The team struggled tremendously last season with their all rookie driver lineup of Shumacher and Nikita Mazepin, so much so that they decided to set their sights on 2022 and the changing technical regulations.
They used their allotment of 460 hours in the wind tunnel — the most of any other team because they finished last in 2021 — to make aerodynamic improvements, and they prioritized spending money on the 2022 season.
Haas and Ferrari have a technical partnership that goes back to 2016, when the American team joined the sport. This season, the Scuderia is supplying Haas with a “gearbox with the rear impact structure, the front and rear suspensions, the wheel hubs, the hydraulic systems and, of course, the new Power Unit, equipped with the ERS upgrade never used by Ferrari’s customer teams in 2021” (Duchessa, 2022).
So far, the plan seems to by paying off for reality TV star and F1 team boss, Guenther Steiner. Danish driver Kevin Magnussen started the season off with an impressive drive to P5 in Bahrain, he is a good teammate for the young Schumacher, and the two make a better driver pairing than last season’s.
The son of Formula 1 legend Michael Shumacher has unfortunately missed out on the points in every round this season, but he is more competitive than he was in his debut year. Spain was the first race that Shumacher made Q3, while teammate Kevin Magnussen has done it four times.
The Dane had high hopes starting from 8th on the grid, but he had first lap contact, a racing incident with Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton at Turn 4. The two had damage and limped back to the pits to try and rejoin the race at the back. Hamilton recovered to and impressive 5th, and K-Mag could only manage 17th.
Magnussen was signed to Haas F1 team in 2017, he drove alongside French driver Romain Grojsean, and the two helped the team through their ups and downs. At the end of the 2020 season, the team was low on funding as sponsors began to pull out, and they needed to take on a new cash cow.
Enter Nikita Mazepin, the Russian driver who’s father provided funding for the team and who struggled tremendously in his rookie season.
Schumacher’s deal with Haas came with German business sponsors, who were needed to keep the team alive until their planned resurrection in 2022. Steiner was forced to make a difficult decision, to cut one of his drivers, and he chose to cut both Magnussen and Grojsean for a rookie driver lineup of Shumacher and Mazepin.
We saw how that worked out for them. They survived to the end of 2021 fincially, scoring 0 points of course, and they decided to cut the Mazepin after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022. Mazepin and his father, the owner of Russian fertilizer company, Uralkali, were very angry with the decision and they felt that it was unfair.
Haas kept Schumacher, and reacquired K-Mag, who is showing Steiner why he was the right driver all along.
Shumacher came up short of the points places in Bahrain (P11), Australia (P13), Miami (P15) where he made an ambitious move on Sebastial Vettel that caused an incident, and Spain (P14) where he was edged out by drivers with fresher tires.
The young German will surely pick up his first points of the season if he continues to make Q3 and stay out of trouble in the races. The next stop on the calendar is Monaco, a notoriously difficult street circuit with rain on the forecast.
Shumacher had a disappointing F1 debut at the track last season, and K-Mag’s highest finish in Monaco is P10, but perhaps the Haas F1 Team can manage a strategiclly sound race weekend.
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