Ferrari has admitted that it would welcome Mick Schumacher to its Driver Academy “with a red carpet” if he decides to join.
It’s not often a Formula 1 team admits the door is open for a young racer to join its Driver Academy if they want to do so.
That’s exactly what Ferrari has said about Mick Schumacher, who is – of course – son of F1 legend and former Ferrari driver Michael.
The 17-year-old has showed impressive form in his single-seater career so far, which included finishing runner-up in ADAC Formula 4 and Italian Formula 4 last year.
So, he’s got some pretty good results under his belt and will make the move up to the super-competitive European Formula 3 series in 2017 with reigning champions Prema. No pressure, then.
He’s been linked to a Mercedes junior role and Ferrari has now revealed it’s keen to add Schumacher to its young driver line-up.
Ferrari Driver Academy manager Massimo Rivola told Gazzetta dello Sport:
“Obviously we follow him. And this year we will have the opportunity to stay very close to Mick, because he will be team-mate of our FDA driver [Guan Yu] Zhou in the Prema team.
“About his future, I don’t know what Mick will decide to do. But if he would like to enter the FDA programme, he will find a red carpet.”
“Mick seems very polite and he’s not full of himself. So congratulations to his parents. They did a very good job with him. He’s very young, and he must manage a very huge media pressure. But he is doing it very well.”
It’d definitely be cool to see the Schumacher name return to Ferrari. The door is open for the youngster, so let’s see what happens in the future.