Niki Lauda: Michael Schumacher will win this year – Formula 1 news
Former F1 driver Niki Lauda is feeling quite confident that Michael Schumacher will take victory in 2012 Formula 1 season while he said that Mercedes have come up stronger this year.
“Michael Schumacher will win this year. Finally Mercedes are good enough to be able to attack the best,” said Lauda.
It will be interesting to mention that the three-time world champion completely underplayed the attribution of Schumacher’s critical assertions on this year’s new generation of Pirelli tyres to his struggling season so far.
“Schumi can’t spoil formula one,” laughed the Austrian legend. “He has been in the business so many years — he knows how it works.”
In this season, the record championship holder has only been able to score two points and is standing at 18th place in the drivers’ championship ahead of Timo Glock of Marussia.
Additionally, he could not pocket even a single point in the first and third race as unfortunately he was retired in both the races. Nevertheless, in the second and fourth race he secured 10th place finish and was able to score one point in each of them.
It will be notable that in Bahrain GP, the veteran driver showed quite a convincing performance as he started from 22nd position in the grid and came 10th in the race. Conversely, he could not convert his competitive grid positions in the first three Grands Prix into a podium finish in either of them.
On the other hand, his teammate, Nico Rosberg has performed comparatively much better than him as he took his first ever pole leading to a race win in the Chinese GP. Besides, he is at sixth place in the drivers’ standings with 35 points.
Lauda also played down the speculations that the legendary driver is feeling frustrated with the success of his teammate and said, “I see Rosberg’s success as spurring him on rather than frustrating him. He will fight through it.”
The seven-time world champion took retirement from the sport back in 2006 and made his comeback with the Brackley based team couple of years ago. Even though, he has not been able to secure even a single podium finish since his return. Nonetheless, hopes are high that he will rise up again as he never gives up.
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