Ex-Haas team boss Guenther Steiner would not recommend his former driver Mick Schumacher as a candidate to fill Esteban Ocon’s upcoming vacant seat at Alpine.
The French outfit faces a driver shakeup for the 2025 season following its decision to split with Ocon, a move that opens the door for new talent to partner Pierre Gasly.
Several drivers are in the mix, with Alpine junior Jack Doohan a potential option to step up, but F1 veteran Valtteri Bottas has also been rumored to be a target for the Enstone squad.
But Schumacher, who currently competes in the World Endurance Championship for Alpine’s Hypercar team, has also been cited as a potential contender to take over Ocon’s drive.
However, it’s an option that Steiner would not recommend, believing there are better candidates - such as Carlos Sainz and Yuki Tsunoda - for Alpine to consider.
“In the moment not, no. You need to get the best driver you know is out there, I think people which are showing that they’re very good,” he said, speaking on the Red Flags podcast.
“And as a works team, you need to do the best you can.”
Steiner suggested that the bad blood that undermined the relationship between Ocon and Gasly in their junior years in motorsport was perhaps a bit too easily dismissed by Alpine.
While Ocon’s move on Gasly in the Monaco Grand Prix was perhaps legitimate, even though it ended badly, the former should have refrained from taking such a risk against his own teammate.
“Obviously you think about it, absolutely you think about it, because it’s just something you don’t want,” added Steiner, commenting on the maneuver.
“And I always say, team-mates don’t need to be the best friends, they don’t need to go out for dinner, but they need to respect each other.
“Because in the end, but it’s generally in life, you need to respect other people.
“If you don’t like to drive with this guy in your team, just go somewhere else. If I don’t like to be somewhere, I move on. I’m not trying to fight it at the cost of somebody else, which is the team.
“So one of them should have said, ‘I cannot be in the team with this other guy’, and somebody else maybe should have seen that.
“Everybody knows about the history of the two of them and even their parents apparently, they had to keep them apart.
“That’s not what you want when you’re going, ‘Oh, we will be teammates, yeah it’s all good, we just fought the last 20 years, but now that’s all good’, you know?"
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