Michael Schumacher could enjoy one of the best races of his season after qualifying fifth for his penultimate F1 start in Austin.
Schumacher took sixth place on merit and then gained a further spot from Romain Grosjean’s gearbox penalty. Crucially he is on the clean side of the track.
“We were anticipating just to get into the top 10,” he said when asked about qualifying by this blog. “That’s what we were thinking could be good for maybe seventh or eighth as a max. For it to be six and then five for the known reason is welcome, particularly being on the right side of the grid.”
Schumacher says that he got the tyres to work in qualifying, when drivers had to run several laps to get them into the operating window.
“The point is that the tyres are very crucial, we’ve known this all year long. Here they are maybe a little bit more peaky, because of their behaviour because of the track conditions and the circumstances.
“It was clearly going out for that lap, because I tried already the lap before, or two laps before that, to set a time, and it wasn’t yet ready. Just everything was switched on and was there. The balance then fitted as well in that circumstance.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Arguably the most successful driver & the best driver in the history of F1 was let down by poor performing cars will now have a chance to prove himself provided the car comes up to his standard before he retires
Personally, I would desperately love to see Michael get one more win. He deserves to finish out with one final stand on top of the podium.
Sadly, he said somewhere else that that is not the car’s race pace so he will have to endure yet another afternoon of slipping down the order. Anyway. let us hope for the best! I hope Michael enjoys his race, enjoys his new Texas ranch, enjoys his retirement, and doesn’t listen to people [especially from Mercedes] who have a good idea! Three years of wasted effort and energy and precious little to show for it.
That car is a joke. Mercedes are a shambolic outfit