Mick Schumacher does not feel that being out of the spotlight at the back of the field was necessarily helpful during his rookie F1 season, and would in fact have welcomed the "pressure" of competing at the front. With Haas opting not to develop their 2021 car during the year in order to focus preparations on 2022, Schumacher and teammate Nikita Mazepin found themselves frequently bringing up the rear of the pack at most race weekends. Some new drivers to the sport may welcome the opportunity to learn their craft without the focus that comes with racing further up the order, but Schumacher is not one of them. When asked whether being out of the spotlight helped for his first season in Formula 1, Schumacher told Crash.net : "I would say, no. "I would say I would rather be in the points and be there fighting for it. Maybe it's more pressure, maybe it's more difficult but I for sure would prefer being thrown into the cold water at times and trying to prove myself in that way. "It's more out there because you'll be more in the pictures, you'll be more on TV and people will talk more about you. In the position that we're in right now, unfortunately we have to get onto the TV in other ways. "That's by usually completely outperforming our car, or unfortunately sometimes when bad things happen." Schumacher's most noticeable battle of 2021 came at the eventful Hungarian Grand Prix, where a first-corner incident affected the running order and gave him the chance to fight with Max Verstappen in the Red Bull, a moment that Schumacher has said was one of his highlights of the year .
Schumacher hoping to fight for points in 2022
Whilst 2021 was a difficult season for Haas - with the team scoring no points and ending the year at the bottom of the Constructors' Championship - Schumacher is hopeful that progress can be made this year. When questioned about how frustrating it was to not be able to show his potential in his debut campaign, Schumacher said: "We accepted that quite early on and we knew what was expected of the car, and we basically all worked in the direction to try and prepare ourselves as good as we can for [2022], where, hopefully we'll be in that position where we can fight for points every weekend." Schumacher is feeling reasonably confident, from what he has seen so far, that Haas can make this step forward. "I think from what I see and from being involved in this, I do have the feeling that we are in a good position," the German added. "How good? We will only know in Bahrain at the first race, but we have this attitude next year that we know we'll have updates coming our way, we will be developing the car and all of those things that we haven't had this year. "So we know that if there is a problem, we can fix it next year."
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