Schumacher "surprised" to reach Q3 in Dutch GP qualifying

Mick Schumacher was "surprised" that Haas managed to make it through to Q3 during F1 qualifying at the Dutch Grand Prix, as he starts the race from eighth on the grid.

The Haas driver managed to go quicker than both Alpine drivers in Q2, with Schumacher putting in a late lap to secure his appearance in the top 10 shootout.

"I'm surprised to be able to get to Q3, I think a lot of teams saw us out in Q1. For us personally, we saw ourselves out in Q2," said Schumacher to media, including RacingNews365.com.

"To out-perform some of the other competitors that seemingly were faster up to now is a great thing, especially on this track where overtaking is still quite difficult."

Schumacher says his confidence in the car has been good since the start of the weekend, despite making little setup changes.

He explained: "I just had real good confidence from the beginning in the car. For the setup I didn't make any changes for now, so yeah, we definitely started on a good foot."

Schumacher: Haas extracting most out of Zandvoort ahead of "tough" Monza

After both Haas drivers were the only to two to finish a lap down apart from Nicholas Latifi during the Belgium Grand Prix, Schumacher says the team is trying to extract the most from this weekend ahead of what they anticipate will be a "tough" weekend at Monza.

He added: "We knew the package should work better here, just because of the the numbers suggest that.

"I think we're happy that we see the correlation between Budapest and here working well and the package does bring something to the table.

"We tried to be strong because we know Monza is going to be a tough one for us."

As for their pace in the race, Schuamcher believes tyre management will be a key factor that affects most of the teams.

"Our long run pace didn't seem too bad. I think everybody's gonna struggle a bit with tire management.

"It's obviously a high intensity track for the tires, especially surface temperatures seem to be concerning at times. I'm just excited to go racing and see what we can do."