Much was expected of Mick Schumacher as he embarked upon the second season of his Formula 1 career in 2022.
This, after all, was the supposed sophomore sensation, a sponge of a driver who became renowned for fully exploiting the experience and knowledge gained across his debut seasons to win the F3 and F2 titles at his second attempts in 2018 and 2020 respectively.
After a quietly composed rookie campaign last year, in which he totally outclassed his team-mate Nikita Mazepin both on and off track, Schumacher was surely set to take off in a much-improved Haas car as he entered year two.
But it has not happened, leading many to question whether the moment of lift-off will ever arrive.
His new team-mate Kevin Magnussen, still carrying the wondrous glow of someone who cannot quite believe his luck at being given another chance in F1, has effectively done to Mick what Mick did to Mazepin.
While Magnussen has scored points in three of the first seven races, including a fine fifth place in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, Schumacher increasingly has the air of a little boy lost.
He has become disturbingly reckless in his desperate pursuit of a first ever points finish while the car remains reasonably competitive, the crashes that occasionally stained his rookie record a recurring theme of his difficult second season.
His qualifying accident in Saudi Arabia, that ruled him out of the race and was estimated to cost his team up to $1million in repairs, was a serious warning sign unheeded on the evidence of his latest major crash at Monaco’s swimming pool section, which ripped the rear of his car off the main chassis.
It appeared to mark a change in tone in the treatment of Schumacher by Haas, whose team principal Guenther Steiner’s assessment of the incident seemed almost ominous.
“With Mick we obviously saw what happened,” Steiner, F1’s answer to Mike Bassett, said after the race. “It’s not very satisfactory having a big crash again. We need to see…
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