Mercedes test driver Mick Schumacher on the current state of his negotiations for a Formula 1 comeback as a regular driver in the 2025 season
“Formula 1 is the big goal. It always has been and it still is,” says Mick Schumacher on Sky. But what are the German racing driver’s chances of actually getting a regular place and competing in Grands Prix in the 2025 season, when officially only two cockpits are still available – one at Sauber/Audi and one at Racing Bulls?
Schumacher does not give a specific answer to this question on the sidelines of a card event in Kerpen, but emphasizes: He continues to work towards his Formula 1 comeback. “That’s why everything else has to stop for now. The [other] options that exist will just have to wait.”
He does not want to disclose details of current talks, says Schumacher. There are “one or two reasons for this that we would like to discuss behind closed doors, but not in public”.
“So I wouldn’t want to get involved in that, because it’s important to me to do my own thing and keep everything that happens behind the scenes private. Just out of respect for both sides.”
Decision at Audi is imminent
Schumacher says nothing about which sides these are. Asked about a cockpit at Sauber, which will become Audi in 2026, he replies: “There will be a decision in September, so we just have to wait and see these weeks. And yes, I don’t think I want to say anything major about the chances or how it looks. In the end, time will simply give us that answer.”
Until then, he can only ensure “that my job as a reserve driver [for Mercedes in Formula 1] and on the race track at Alpine [in the World Endurance Championship] goes as well as possible,” says Schumacher. This has recently worked well in the Alpine prototype at Fuji: Schumacher achieved the first podium finish this year with Alpine.
His activities at Mercedes, on the other hand, are less visible or take place “more behind the scenes”, as Schumacher himself puts it. For example, he provides simulator services for the team around Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. “You don’t really see that much happening there. But things are going well there too,” says Schumacher. “So we’re all actually quite positive that I’ll continue with this.”
This last sentence in particular sounds as if Schumacher is set to stay with Mercedes for 2025: not as a regular driver and successor to Hamilton, who is moving to Ferrari, but as a test and reserve driver should he not be able to join Sauber/Audi or Racing Bulls.
Mick Schumacher: Timing is everything
“In Formula 1, it’s just like that,” says Schumacher. “Sometimes you are in the right place at the right time and sometimes you’re not. That’s why it’s important for me now, and I can share this, to be in the right place at the right time.”
“But in the end, the time happened as it happened. That’s why I don’t really like to look at the past, but at the future and see that I’m in the right mindset, but also in the right position, where it brings me the most and ultimately gives me what I want and what I work for every day.”
If there is no cockpit in Formula 1, then…
And what if not? Would another year as an Alpine works driver in the World Endurance Championship be an option as a “Plan B”? Schumacher: “I think I’ll deal with that when the time comes and Plan A doesn’t work.”
“As I said, we are confident that Plan A will work and we are doing our best to make it happen. But as I said, yes, Plan B must be in the back of our minds. I don’t know yet where that will lead.”