Mick Schumacher suffered a crash at the end of first practice on Friday which could prove to be another nail in the coffin for his Formula 1 prospects.
The German has these final five race weekends of the season to save his F1 career, with Haas considering replacing him from next year. With that in mind he needs to produce some good displays, starting this weekend at the Japanese Grand Prix.
But he got off to the worst possible start by crashing his Haas at the end of the first practice session on Friday morning. He span off in the wet conditions, slamming hard into the barrier and causing significant damage to his VF-22.
In fact, it was so extensive that Haas were forced to change the chassis of his car for the rest of the weekend. That meant he missed out on FP2, and in turn surrendered some vital track time at a venue where he has never raced in F1.
Schumacher sounded somewhat surprised by what had happened in the moments after the crash, which took place on the cool down lap on the way back to the pits. "Ah, I... just had a huge aquaplaning. Wow," he told his race engineer, before responding again to confirm that he was uninjured.
A tweet from Haas confirmed: "Mick will be unable to participate in FP2 due to the requirement of a chassis change following his incident at the end of FP1." It meant the team would only be able to field Kevin Magnussen in that session.
Team boss Guenther Steiner has made it clear in recent months that he has been underwhelmed by Schumacher's performances. Despite having a more competitive car to play with in his second season with the team, the German has managed to score points on only two occasions so far in 2022.
Those impressive performances, at back-to-back race weekends at Silverstone and in Austria, have been offset by costly crashes. This one at Suzuka is the latest of them, after larger shunts earlier in the year in Saudi Arabia and Monaco.
Steiner has kept mostly quiet on his decision-making process regarding who will drive alongside Magnussen next season. But he did declare this week that his team is "done with rookies", perhaps hinting that he would prefer a more experienced racer in the seat currently occupied by Schumacher.
