Mick Schumacher wins 2020 FIA Formula 2 Championship: “A big thank you to the team”
It was a difficult race but for sure a memorable one for Mick Schumacher at Bahrain International Circuit. The German driver, who started his career in karting, capitalized on his outstanding season to secure the 2020 FIA Formula 2 Championship at the end of a drama-filled race.
In the beginning, Schumacher fought aggressively at the front and went to the attack. The situation became tenser for him after a big lockup left him in trouble with his tyres and forced him to pit. Schumacher eventually ended up in P18, but his closest rival for the title was not able to score enough points to beat him in the championship.
For PREMA Racing, it is the second driver title in Formula 2 after winning the inaugural season in 2017 with Charles Leclerc.
Robert Shwartzman managed to bring home a good top-5 finish which saw him perform like a superb team player. The Russian showed high performance and great consistency over the final round of the championship, which saw him end up with four wins, more than anyone else and fourth in the final driver standings.
Mick Schumacher: “I cannot deny I would have wished to win this championship in a different way, but now I just don’t care and am just happy. I will think about all the ‚ifs‘ and ‚whys‘ at a later stage, because still we managed to achieve this title and this is all that counts now. The race itself, well, was difficult to say the least. I had a flat spot after the big lock-up when I just really braked too late. I was trying to keep the pace up but it got more and more difficult, and to be honest, when the team told me to come in to change tyres I initially was afraid I would lose everything. But it worked out the way our engineers predicted it, and even if I did not manage to go to the top again, this was the right thing to do. A big thank you to the team for this race, for this season, for the hard work, for the tight battles, for the great laughters and the Hardrock battles - I will move on now to F1, but my memories will always remain with them.”
Robert Shwartzman: "This weekend we were still lacking a bit of pace compared to the leaders, but it was still good enough and better compared to yesterday. P5 is not really the result I wanted but there was a lot of fighting going on. I could have caught the opportunity with Ilott but I also struggled to stay close to him. At some point, there was a big fight with a mess going around. I gained and lost position and I managed to finish in P5. We were just missing something with the balance that could have probably helped me to get past Ilott and maybe finish on the podium. P4 is maybe not the best position you can finish in a championship, just away from the top-3, but we still got the most wins and as a rookie, I wasn’t a bad year at all. Without a few bad weekends, we would have had the chance to fight for the championship especially with how we performed in the last few races. We have to learn from our mistakes, and I look forward to next year. Congrats to my teammate, he did a great job and was more consistent so I’m happy for him and the whole team."