“Today was not the best from my side” – Mick Schumacher

The Uralkali Haas F1 Team will be looking forward to the first Qualifying session of the 2022 season, after qualifying yet again in nineteenth and twentieth for the last round of the 2021 championship. Mick Schumacher will start from nineteenth with Nikita Mazepin in twentieth at the Yas Marina Circuit.

Schumacher has actually had relatively good pace so far at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, unfortunately for the rookie though it wasn’t his best qualifying of the season.

Schumacher is disappointed with his final qualifying of his rookie year but is excited for qualifying next season.

“I’m happy that we had a good year overall with qualifying pace but I think today was not the best from my side – we didn’t really know what we wanted from each other, the car and I. Those things happen, we learn from them and we’ll go back and analyze what we did different and see how we can improve it.

“When we go back next year and we’re in the position to be going into Q2 more, we don’t have that. We had a pretty good car for qualifying, so hopefully we have an even better one for the race to go and fight.”

“Still opportunities to potentially be extracted” – Nikita Mazepin

Nikita Mazepin was somewhat upbeat after qualifying, the Russian driver clearly loves Formula One and doesn’t ever want to get out of his car. Nevertheless his twentieth place start for the finale does mean Mazepin is the only driver this season who has failed to make it out of Qualifying One.

Mazepin isn’t concerned by this, and believes that there are still plenty of opportunities around the corner.

“It’s tough but there are still opportunities to potentially be extracted. The race is always a different challenge, it offers you different opportunities than qualifying and I think on this new track layout, it will be an interesting one. I’m ready to race tonight – I don’t want to wait for tomorrow.”