Schumacher: No hard feelings towards 'valuable friend' Vettel

Mick Schumacher looked set to conquer his first top-ten finish in F1 in the closing stages of the Miami GP, but the Haas driver's efforts were undone by an unfortunate clash with his good friend Sebastian Vettel.

Starting from P15, Schumacher battled his way into the first half of the field and was running in ninth position when the race resumed after a late Safety Car period.

But just three laps from the checkered flag, the young German sought to regain a position lost to Vettel by lunging inside the Aston Martin driver at Turn 1.

Unfortunately, it all went wrong for Schumacher and his mentor as Vettel took the racing line into the corner, oblivious to the Haas driver's presence.

"Obviously a shame that we made contact and both of us out of the race, out of the points," commented the four-time world champion.

"I’m disappointed for Mick and myself obviously that the two of us lost a good opportunity to score points today.

"I don’t know, I did not expect him, I need to have a look again. When I saw him, it was obviously too late, so we made contact.

"We should have done better, but I need to have a look again."

Schumacher hadn't yet spoken to Vettel when he was queried on the clash, but the 23-year-old was happy to hear that the Aston driver had deemed the incident as unfortunate.

"I tried a move and it’s obviously super difficult to see something in the rear view mirrors," Schumacher said. "Very unfortunate, it was a good race to the end.

"I tried not to go super deep, tried to leave a bit of space, but again, clearly was too tight. We’ll have to have a look at it.

• Read also: Team Talk - Sunday in Miami

"But I’m sure it will also be good for me to see what Seb thinks about it.

"It’s nice that I can learn from him, he’s so valuable to me as a friend, so yeah, we’ll see. Obviously we’re all racers.

"We’ll just have to move on from here."

Despite missing out on his first championship point, Schumacher was encouraged by his performance in Miami, having outpaced Haas teammate Kevin Magnussen for most of the afternoon.

"I think the pace was there," he said. "It all was looking good but unfortunately the last few laps were a bit chaotic."

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