Just a week after Schumacher battled last year’s world champion Max Verstappen at the end of the race at Silverstone, Michael Schumacher’s son took on seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton in a sprint at the Red Bull Ring in Austria.
Schumacher and Magnussen initially drove together and fought for seventh place. As Hamilton gradually closed in on them, Schumacher had to go on the defensive to maintain eighth place.
However, Magnussen drove him so far that Schumacher could no longer rely on the DRS system to defend his position on the straights. He therefore asked the team to slow Magnussen down so he could use DRS to defend against Hamilton.
The Brit eventually got ahead of Schumacher. The German subsequently expressed his dissatisfaction with the fact that the team did not send him ahead of Magnussen, as he was, in his words, “much faster”.
“We need to talk about it. The fight with Lewis was fun, but it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. I think in a way I was a lot faster,” said Schumacher to Sky F1, who thinks that Magnussen should have let him in front of him, but the team did not allow him to do so, according to him.
“I think I had more speed. We’ll look into it so I can understand why we didn’t change positions. I felt I could attack Esteban (Ocon) at the front. In a way, I was protecting his (Magnussen) ass from Lewis’s attacks. I was hoping it would slow down, but it didn’t. I was then vulnerable to Hamilton’s DRS.’
Haas did not tell Magnussen to let Schumacher in front of him
Magnussen said he was not asked by Haas to let Schumacher in front of him. According to him, the American team cannot be disappointed by the seventh and ninth place in the sprint.
“I don’t know. Of course I can’t hear what Mick is saying. But it was a great day for us, we scored points, for tomorrow’s main race we start from seventh and ninth position. We really can’t be disappointed with this one,” said Magnussen.
“I thought we had a problem this morning. The speed didn’t seem good, neither did the balance. We have made some changes, but we are limited due to parc ferme. You can’t change the settings, you can change the flaps on the front wing and some things in the system.’
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