Mick Schumacher has faced criticism from many sides this season, though he might have expected to get a little more support from his own uncle.
But Ralf Schumacher has been bluntly honest about his nephew's performances. Despite recent improvements, the young German is still under pressure after two hefty and expensive crashes earlier in the year, while also being outshone by Haas team-mate Kevin Magnussen.
The Dane showed up in Hungary at the weekend ready for a swathe of new upgrades on his car. Haas have been waiting a long time for this and, among other things, gave Magnussen new sidepods, bodywork and rear brake ducts to play with in Budapest.
Meanwhile, Schumacher had to stick with the original design of the VF-22 as the team only had enough parts to give one of their drivers the upgrade. According to Ralf, his nephew only has himself to blame for not being the one chosen to race with the new spec car.
"It's common practice and it was the same with other teams in the past," he told Sky Sports in Germany ," before adding: "Mick should have delivered better results beforehand."
The new parts did not help Magnussen to a strong result in Hungary after picking up damage in the early stages which forced him to seek help from his engineers. "Our race was compromised massively by having to pit for the black and orange flag," he said after finishing 16th.
"Then later we couldn't really switch the hard tyre on, so it was good to get off that and do some laps on the medium compound. It was positive from the perspective that we could put the car on track and immediately measure what we were hoping for. It's just going to be a lot of work to get the lap time out of it and that's going to come over the next few races."
Schumacher finished two places ahead but was still a long way off the points. He added: "It was again tougher than what we expected it to be. We hoped that the C2 compound would work and it didn't, so in terms of strategy we maybe gambled on the wrong tyre.
"We had a good start, that's what we aim for, but unfortunately we couldn't make it stick so it was P14 at the end. I think we have a lot to look back at, analyse and understand, so that for Spa we know how the new package works, what we need in terms of set-up and what we need to be quick. I expect this package to work pretty well in Spa and if that's the case, we'll know then for sure."
