Williams team principal James Vowles has issued a public apology to Mick Schumacher. Vowles’ initial comments at the Italian Grand Prix suggested that Schumacher was not “special” enough to secure a seat with the Grove outfit, prompting a considerable amount of backlash from fans.
Williams needed to choose a driver to pair with Alex Albon for the last nine races of the season, ultimately deciding between Schumacher, Red Bull reserve driver Liam Lawson, and their academy prodigy Franco Colapinto. The team went with Colapinto to replace Logan Sargeant, citing his connection to the Williams Academy and his familiarity with their simulator.
During the Italian Grand Prix, Vowles controversially remarked:
“If we go through what our options were available to us, there were sort of three options on the table: one was Liam Lawson, one was Mick and one was Franco.
“With Liam, the contractual sort of position of Red Bull wouldn’t have worked with me here at Williams so that didn’t become an option for us in that circumstance. And then it’s a tough choice, it really is between [Franco] and Mick.
“Mick has improved a lot from where he was in Haas, there is no doubt about it. He’s a competent driver that I know he had his time but he has done incredible work with Alpine, with Mercedes and with McLaren in the meantime.
“So the decision is ‘do we put Mick in the car’, which I think Mick would have done a good job, or ‘do we invest in an individual that’s a part of our academy, that’s done hundreds to thousands of laps in our simulator, that’s driven the car, and on the data that we can see from how he’s performing, who’s making significant steps?’
“I think both would fall into a category of good and not special. I think we have to be straightforward about this.
“Mick isn’t special, he would just be good.”
Today, Vowles has commented on the F1 TV broadcast, as reported by Autosport:
“Where I read the headlines afterwards this morning, what really came across is using the word special in the context of Mick.
“And I really want to clarify what I mean, first and foremost,
“I’m not here to put Mick down. Mick is in a world championship team [Mercedes] who have chosen him as reserve driver.
“And there’s good reason behind it. That is because he’s an incredibly strong candidate.
“And the word special? I use it in the context of multiple world champions like Ayrton Senna fundamentally, Lewis [Hamilton] as well. Clearly that’s a foolish thing to do, because that’s the comparison.”
Schumacher, currently a reserve driver for Mercedes and competing in the World Endurance Championship with Alpine, has been out of an F1 seat since the end of 2022. Vowles acknowledged Schumacher’s past challenges and notable progress, saying:
“Here’s where Mick is: he’s had a tough run of it.
“He’s made some exceptional progress, and he’s in a very strong team around him.
“Our decision is based on the fact that we want to go with our academy and our drivers.
“I’ve apologised to Mick as well. He didn’t request anything, but it’s important to me, because he’s incredibly close to me, and it just came across entirely the wrong way.
“So more than anything else, I wanted that to be abundantly clear.
“Don’t doubt his abilities, but we as Williams have to go with our Academy. It makes sense what we’re doing.”
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