Schumacher hails engineer relationship for "more aggressive" style

Mick Schumacher has put his increased 'aggression' in the Haas VF-21 down to a blossoming relationship with chief engineer Gary Gannon.

Schumacher revealed he has become far more comfortable in exploring his set-up after the ‘best race’ of his short career last weekend in Portugal before outqualifying Nicholas Latifi's Williams for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Asked about where he felt the improvements had come from he said: “I think they come from partly myself but also in the communication and the way we work as a team.

“We are a lot more aggressive in terms of trying to find the limits in terms of set-up and so I think therefore we are making steps forward and we can be very happy.

“Gary is great. Obviously, we’ve just started working together this year and I felt straight away that we kind of managed to work very closely and openly together, which is unusual.

“I felt our base was very good already and something we can build on. If you look at my performance this year it is partly due to him and the positive effect, our relationship is very good.”

After outqualifying a driver from another team for the first time in F1 without incident playing a role, Schumacher stated his main goal is to continue his development during the race.

"The main goal is to keep learning, gather the information and progress," he added.

"It is going to be a bit of a different concept this weekend just because the tyre management requires different things, mainly saving the rear tyres.

"But in the weekends leading up to now, we have been trying to save the tyres all around. It is a new challenge, will be different and obviously low overtaking chances here.

"We are going to be pushing and hopefully also through strategy be able to get some places in front."

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