The Athletic

The Race is on, and Mick Schumacher's Formula One options are narrowing for

2023 with the few remaining seats close to being filled.

But how good is he and has he done enough to deserve a place on the grid next year?

I'm Ed Straw and joining us to tackle those questions and more are Scott Mitchell Malm and Glenn Freeman.

Well, Glenn will come to you first, a rare appearance on the F1 podcast, usually in the world of

Bring Back V10s. Do you think you can get your head in the world of the contemporary?

I'll give it a go. Yeah, it'd be great if we could just talk about Sebastian Vettel driving at Williams FW 14B for the next hour or so. But no, I'm ready to go. I've dropped a few cylinders and I've got my hybrid ready. And for those are wondering what we're talking about who don't listen to bring back v10s. firstly, what are you doing? That's our sister podcast. It's a retro podcast. Focus is mainly on 1989 to 2005, but occasionally strays beyond that. So it's well worth of listen. The sixth season, it's just winding down at the moment, but there's loads to listen to that, always very enjoyable to do and to listen to and Scott Mitchell Malm, how's life? Yeah, all good, thank you. It's nice to actually be in the same room as you guys and actually recording a podcast together. We've done so many now that obviously when we do the post-race podcasts, especially you and me, Mark Hughes, that tends to be if we're all at the same race, we are on site together, more often than not. But rare for us to have three people in the same room, and especially when it's also someone from the sort of like the business side of the business rather than the editorial side, so to speak. Makes me sound far more important than I am. I think you've got a pretty grandiose title, aren't you? Editor-in-Chief, Brackets, Bossman. Yeah, brackets V-10. I think the describing governance from the business side of the business sounds a bit like, rather than just the gallivanting around, generally messing about side of the business, which kind of is us. Well, those are your job titles. Exactly. And we fulfill them very, very well, I think. That's one of the benefits of

the job. Well, we'll set gallivanting aside for a moment and turn our attention to Mick Schumacher,

Scott. He scored 12 points this season compared to teammate Kevin Magnuson's 22, but points can be an

unreliable witness, particularly in lower scoring teams. So how has Schumacher really stacked

up this year? Well, the points finishes and the results that stand out as his headline achievements

in Formula One are just not the problem. We've said this before, probably whatever, we've talked

about Mick on this podcast. The peaks really aren't the problem with him he's he's uh he's capable of being very quick he is capable

of piecing together entire grand prix weekends as well that was one of the things that was missing

pretty much until the middle of this year and then when he pieced together that little run of

of of good races the british grand prix the aust Austrian Grand Prix, he was doing a very good job in Canada before then as well.

We were starting to see that capacity to bring it together and deliver the results that were needed.

I'm glad that he was able to do that while the car was still competitive. There was a serious risk, and we've seen it with the way Hatt's form has tailed off. There's a serious risk that Schumacher was going to get it all together just at the point where the team totally nosedived in terms of performance. And then he could have gone, he could realistically have gone through the year pointless. So he's done a good job with that side of things. He's hitting the peaks. He's worked out of how to piece it together. He's outperformed Magnuson in qualifying. He's done good, good clean races, aggressive drives as well, been decisive when he's needed to be. Actually, easy to forget, but recently he did a very good job at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zanvort. He qualified very strongly. It was a solid first stint. He was going to be in points contention, but had a problem at the pit stop. It wasn't in his control. These are all the good things. The bad thing is we still don't see this at a level of consistency that's emphatic enough to say,

yeah, man, you absolutely command a place on the grid,

which is kind of why we're talking about him in this podcast now.

There's a reason, ultimately, he's an incumbent driver, a team already in 2022,

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