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Michael Schumacher: It was much worse than expected today

Schumacher’s first set of tyres ruined his race at Austin

By

19 November 2012 - 01:14

Michael Schumacher suffered a highly uncompetitive United States Grand Prix, after the German legend struggled greatly on his first set of tyres. This in turn forced him onto a two-stop strategy, and severely compromised his race. After starting a competitive 5th, the seven-time World Champion eventually finished a distant 16th.

Throughout the first 15 laps of the race, Michael Schumacher literally plummeted through the order as his tyres failed to work to their fullest extent. This saw Schumacher down in 14th as he served his first pit-stop, gladly bidding farewell to his disastrous opening set of tyres. However, it was too late for the German legend to redeem himself throughout the second half of the race, as Schumacher continued to loose ground to his nearest competitors to finish a disastrous 16th.

“To say that the race was a real struggle would be an understatement.” Explained a downcast Michael Schumacher, “I couldn’t get any grip from my first set of tyres, and there must have been some kind of damage for them to perform so badly. We had to change our strategy to two stops which then compromised our race even further. All in all, it was much worse than expected today, especially considering that things did not look that bad yesterday and Friday.”

Michael Schumacher’s race was so uncompetitive that the German’s team-mate Nico Rosberg was able to finish ahead of him, despite starting the race twelve positions behind Schumacher on the grid. However, Mercedes still failed to score a single World Championship point, which means the German marque have failed to score a point since the Singapore Grand Prix back in September.

With Michael Schumacher set to bid life as a Formula 1 driver farewell after next weekend’s grand finale at Brazil, the German driver will unarguably be striving to end his return to the sport on a positive note with at least a points finish after an exceedingly tough string of races, which has seen Schumacher fail to score a point since the Italian Grand Prix.

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