Mick Schumacher water leak caused by vigorous bouncing

Ewan Gale
Friday 10 June 2022 21:00

Mick Schumacher has revealed the water leak that "wrecked" his Azerbaijan practice plan was caused by the aggressive porpoising that plagued the F1 field.

Almost every car was a victim of the vigorous bouncing at the Baku City Circuit, with Pierre Gasly labelling his ride as "absolutely shocking" and the Mercedes duo of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton continuing their season-long groans.

Schumacher had completed just three laps when his Haas sprung the leak through the right-hand sidepod, with the gushing water forcing the German to come to a halt on track.

“It seems that the problem with the water leak came from the heavy bouncing that we suffered in the first lap, and it just wrecked the plan," explained Schumacher.

"It’s the first time physically that I do feel the effect of it. It’s quite harsh on the body and also on the car, so it’s definitely something to think about for future events.

"This track, in general, is quite light on tyres except for obviously the surface temperature being quite high.

"It will be interesting to analyse deeper, so we have a good overview for the race.”

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner revealed that Schumacher's team-mate, Kevin Magnussen, was close to suffering the same fate.

"FP1 started badly with the water leak on Mick’s car - he couldn’t go out - which is not good at a track like this," said Steiner.

"Something strange happened. Actually, we’re lucky the same thing didn’t happen to Kevin as he was very close to it as well, so we fixed it for FP2."