Regarding Alpine’s decision to name Mick Schumacher as a candidate for an F1 seat in 2025, his former team principal Guenther Steiner believes it is not the right move and that the team should target the best driver on the market.
Alpine is trying to bounce back from a tough start to the 2024 F1 season, scoring just two points so far, but there are question marks over the futures of drivers Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, who are both out of contract at the end of the season.
Günther Steiner tells Alpine not to target Mick Schumacher
With Alpine likely to need at least one new driver for its 2025 F1 line-up, team principal Bruno Famin has admitted that Schumacher, who impressed Alpine with his performances in the World Endurance Championship and previously raced for Haas under Steiner as team principal, is one of the candidates.
but, Red Flag Speaking on the podcast, Steiner stressed that as a works team, Alpine “should have the funds to get the best drivers on the market”, naming Carlos Sainz, who is leaving Ferrari at the end of this season, and RB’s Yuki Tsunoda as top drivers in that category.
So when asked if he would consider Schumacher if he were Alpine boss, Steiner replied: “At the moment, no.”
“I need to get the best drivers I know. I need people who demonstrate they are very good.”
“And as a works team we need to do the best we can.”
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Ocon slammed the criticism and speculation over his future with Alpine after retiring from the race after a first lap collision with Gasly in Monaco.
However, Ocon and Gasly have not always seen eye to eye in the past, and Steiner feels Alpine needs to consider the potential impact very carefully when designing its 2025 driver line-up.
Asked if, as team principal, he would be concerned about Ocon getting into a collision with his teammate, Steiner replied: “Of course I think about it. I definitely think about it, because that’s something I don’t want.”
“I always say this: Teammates don’t have to be best friends or go out to dinner together, but they do have to respect each other. At the end of the day, in life in general, you have to respect other people.”
“If I don’t like having this guy on my team, I can go somewhere else. If I don’t like being somewhere, I’ll move on. I’m not going to sacrifice anyone else, the team.”
“So one of them should have said, ‘I can’t be on the team with this guy,’ and someone else should have realized that. Everyone knows their history, even their parents, and apparently they had to separate them.”
“You don’t want to think, ‘Oh, we’re going to be teammates, yeah, everything’s fine, we’ve been fighting for the last 20 years and now everything’s fine,’ right?”
Others such as current Alpine reserve driver Jack Doohan have also been mentioned as possible candidates for 2025.
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