Alpine World Endurance Championship driver Mick Schumacher says that he is “excited to see what happens” about his future in F1 following Lewis Hamilton’s decision to move to Ferrari.
Schumacher has been Mercedes’ reserve driver since losing his race seat at Haas at the end of the 2022 season.
However, this season he will be racing in the World Endurance Championship in the new Alpine hypercar, revealed today alongside the team’s new A524 F1 car.
Following news last week that Hamilton will leave Mercedes at the end of the 2024 season to race for Ferrari from next year, Schumacher admitted he had been surprised by the news.
“Obviously it kind of hit everybody as a shock – and so it did to me,” he told media including RaceFans at the Alpine launch today.
“But on the other hand, everybody has to do what feels right to them. What is going to happen in the next year or weeks is still to be revealed and also for me. So I’m just excited to see what happens to see in the future.”
Schumacher said it was a “special feeling” to be at Enstone, the same factory of the Benetton team that his father Michael Schumacher won the first two of his seven world championship titles with.
“Because obviously my dad has raced here and won his first championships with Benetton with a Renault engine,” Schumacher said. “So it’s an interesting kind of path because kind of feels like I’ve made all the steps that he has done in motorsport.”
Schumacher and Alpine will be targeting victory in this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours against defending winners Ferrari, who Schumacher was a junior driver of for many years. Asked by RaceFans how it would feel to compete against Ferrari in the WEC this season, Schumacher insisted there was no extra motivation.
“I guess it’s not much different compared to how it would feel to go against a competitor at any time,” he said. “I think that we all respect each other and I think we’re all just keen on getting into racing and the best may win.”
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