It’s nice for me to remind people of what my dad did: Mick Schumacher

He had started out competing under his mother’s maiden name to shield him from the media, then he ascended through the junior ranks with meticulous attention to detail, interrogating engineers for clues to the cars and seeking out advice from friends of his father. Before he fulfilled his dream, he wanted to try and eliminate all the elements of surprise that might throw him off course.

In his mind, he simulated how his first race might unfold hundreds of times. What all that preparation can never quite replicate, though, is the tension that grips the muscles and nerve-endings once you’re sat on the grid alone and waiting, or the anxious excitement that clouds all those clearly laid plans as the lights go out. And so, at the fourth turn on his first full racing lap, with the dirt and dust in humid Bahrain sticking to the track, Schumacher trod on the throttle a little too certainly. Like a trigger had been fired, the car suddenly lurched out of his control, span up against the kerb and then into the gravel.

Schumacher is back in Bahrain now, but for all the inevitable weight of his surname, that spin was one of few aberrations during his maiden season in Formula One. He is obsessive about data and, on the surface, a 19th place finish in the drivers’ standings without any points scored makes for an unflattering assessment. But beneath a limited Haas car lies encouraging signs, remarkable consistency and a little frustration that Schumacher hasn’t yet been able to test himself more against his rivals.

“The target is always to be the best, it’s the same this season, even though maybe on paper we’re not going to be anywhere close to the championship fight,” he says. “But crazy things have happened in the past and crazy things might happen again, you never know.” If a love of racing has always come naturally, it is the obstacles away from the track that have been treated with the most caution. Schumacher has become accustomed to fielding overly intrusive questions about his father’s health and he admits attention from the media used to be a little overwhelming.

“The reason why we used my mother’s name at the beginning was so I could grow and be left alone in some ways,” he says. There is no avoiding the likenesses to his father, from the appearance that evokes so many memories to the uninhibited ambition of what he hopes to achieve, but Schumacher insists it is only a burden in the eyes of others. “I don’t feel that pressure because I don’t pay attention to it, I just blend it out,” he says. “I can create my own legacy while still looking back at what my dad did. It’s nice for me to be able to remind people of what my dad did and at the same time show what can I do.”