Mick: ’20 years back’ it would’ve been a different story

Mick Schumacher reckons “20 years back” he may not have walked away from his Saudi Arabian qualifying crash.

Schumacher suffered a horror crash in Saturday night’s qualifying at the Jeddah circuit.

Mounting the Turn 10 kerb, the Haas driver lost control of his VF-22 and ploughed into the barrier nose-first at over 160mph.

Such was the force of the impact that he bounced off the barrier and had a secondary impact before his car came to a standstill down at Turn 12.

Although he was airlifted to hospital for precautionary checks, Schumacher was unhurt in the crash and was discharged later that same night.

“I feel all right, not too sore either,” he told Sky F1. “It just shows the safety of these cars these days.

“To be able to walk away from this, I think 20 years back from here people wouldn’t have been able to do that. So thank you very much to everyone involved in getting the safety up.”

VB checking on Mick, what a man pic.twitter.com/6yFYppgdqg

— F1 Reaction Pictures (@FormulaReaction) March 26, 2022

Schumacher was ruled out of Sunday night’s grand prix, not because of health issues but because of a shortage of parts should Haas suffer another big accident before heading to Melbourne for the Australian GP.

Speaking about his crash, the 23-year-old added: “It’s interesting because most of the time when you have an accident, or you know something is going wrong, the time changes a bit, like it feels a bit slower.

“I saw the wall coming towards me, I knew I could prepare for impact and stuff. It was unfortunate because I had the car for, to sure, go into Q3 but we’ll have to do it in Melbourne now.”

This year Formula 1 took additional steps to improve the safety of the cars, those said to be responsible for almost half of