Mick Schumacher: “After my father’s accident I had to stand on my own two feet”
Mick Schumacher has opened up about his relationship with his father, Michael Schumacher, in a new book.Mick Schumacher, the son of Formula 1 legend Michael Schumacher, has revealed that he still uses the advice his father gave him.
Michael Schumacher, who shares the all-time F1 record with Lewis Hamilton as a seven-time world champion, was seriously injured in a skiing accident in the French Alps in December 2013 and details of his condition have been kept secret since then.
Mick, who was only 14 when his father was involved in the accident, pursued his dream of reaching F1 without his father’s guidance. After two seasons with Haas, he became a reserve driver for his father’s Mercedes team from 2010 to 2012.
In his new book, Inside Mercedes F1, author Matt Whyman has included a conversation with Mick about his father’s influence.
“I was a crazy kid, I did everything my dad did,” Mick Schumacher told Whyman about his father.
“I started karting when I was three. I was six when I first went scuba diving. I was skydiving when I was ten. My dad was always very open to me trying anything I wanted to do, and the only thing I wanted to do was race because that’s what I enjoyed the most.”
“He was really supportive and a lot of fun, but he could also be tough. I once braked too late going into a corner in a kart race and gained a lot of time. When I told him, he said, ‘Yeah, but you should brake like that for every corner!’”
“Whenever he felt I wasn’t taking it seriously he would say, ‘Mick, would you rather go and play football with your friends? If so, we don’t need to do all this.’ I insisted I wanted to race and he said, ‘OK, let’s do this properly then.’ So we started doing more karting in Europe and I started getting better.”
After the accident, the guidance Mick Schumacher received from his father ended. Schumacher described that period as follows: “Then my father had an accident.”
“The following year I started racing in the Formula class and from that point on I had to stand on my own two feet.”
“But I definitely learned a lot of technical points from him that I still use today, and he coached me. And I’ve always been very resilient. Whenever I got injured, I would just get back into it, and I still am, actually.”
Alongside his role at Mercedes, Schumacher races hypercars in the World Endurance Championship with Alpine’s developing team.
This season he joined forces with Frenchmen Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere in the number 36 car and achieved an impressive first podium finish for the team at the Fuji 6 Hours.
Despite this success, Schumacher’s desire to rejoin the F1 grid has not been realised, with the 2025 grid almost complete and no opportunity present itself.
Schumacher was under consideration for a seat by Audi, but the team announced this week that Brazilian Formula 2 championship leader Gabriel Bortoleto will race alongside Nico Hulkenberg for next year.
