Steiner warns Alpine against signing Schumacher to F1 team

Ex-Haas Formula 1 team principal Guenther Steiner has warned the Alpine team against signing Mick Schumacher.

Alpine currently has a spot open for next year after it confirmed that Esteban Ocon would leave the squad at the end of the 2024 campaign.

Schumacher currently races for Alpine in the World Endurance Championship and acts as a reserve driver for Mercedes.

The German spent two seasons racing for the Haas F1 outfit during Steiner's stint as team principal in 2021 and 2022 before he was dropped in favour of Nico Hulkenberg.

After highlighting Carlos Sainz and Yuki Tsunoda as potential options for Alpine, the Italian was asked by The Red Flags Podcast if Schumacher should be considered, to which he replied: “In the moment not, no.

“You need to get the best driver you know is out there. I think people which are showing that they’re very good.

“And as a works team, you need to do the best you can.”

Gasly tension

Tensions at Alpine rose after the Monaco Grand Prix when Ocon made contact on the opening lap with team-mate Pierre Gasly.

With the duo known to have a history prior to becoming team-mates, Steiner suggested that unease between the pair was inevitable.

“I always say, team-mates don’t need to be the best friends, they don’t need to go out for dinner, but they need to respect each other,” Steiner said.

“Because in the end, but it’s generally in life, you need to respect other people.

“If you don’t like to drive with this guy in your team, just go somewhere else.

“If I don’t like to be somewhere, I move on. I’m not trying to fight it at the cost of somebody else, which is the team.

“So one of them should have said, ‘I cannot be in the team with this other guy’, and somebody else maybe should have seen that.

“Everybody knows about the history of the two of them and even their parents apparently, they had to keep them apart.

“That’s not what you want when you’re going, ‘Oh, we will be team-mates, yeah it’s all good, we just fought the last 20 years, but now that’s all good’.”