Guenther Steiner has confirmed that Mick Schumacher will not compete in Sunday’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix after his high-speed crash during Qualifying on Saturday evening.
Schumacher lost control of his VF-22 at turn eleven and hit the wall at high speed, with the car ending up striking the wall on the other side of the track before coming to rest at the exit of turn twelve.
With the session red-flagged, the Haas F1 Team driver was attended to immediately by the medical team before being taken to hospital for checks, with Schumacher potentially set to stay there overnight as a precaution.
As a result of this, and with his car needing a lot of repair work to be ready to race, Steiner, the Team Principal at Haas, has confirmed that Schumacher will not take to the track on Sunday despite having qualified fourteenth.
“A very eventful day for us,” said Steiner. “The best thing is that Mick has apparently no injuries, he’s in the hospital right now and being evaluated by the doctors, so he is in good hands at the moment.
“There is a possibility that he’ll have to stay for observation overnight at the hospital. Based on these facts and where we are, we have decided not to field his car tomorrow.”
On the other side of the garage, Kevin Magnussen was able to qualify inside the top ten for a second consecutive weekend, despite the Dane having missed a lot of running on Friday due to technical issues.
Magnussen was unable to better tenth in the top ten shootout, with Steiner putting that down to the lack of track time he had across the weekend prior to Qualifying.
“Kevin, having not done a lot of practice yesterday, I think he did a fantastic job today getting into Q3,” said the Team Principal. “His last run was not as planned but I think that was down to not having enough time on track.
“We’re still happy with Q3 and P10 tomorrow.”