2021 final review: Haas gamble comes at a high price

At the end of the Formula 1 season, it's time to evaluate the performance of all the teams and drivers. We start with Haas who had an all new driver lineup this season, but it didn't stop them finishing last.

For Haas, 2021 was always going to be a difficult year. The American team had already decided not to think about this year. Everything was focused on the 2022 car, so the two rookies that the team appointed to the car had a tough debut year.

From Haas' perspective, it's understandable that they chose this scenario, but it's risky. Firstly, money was lost in 2021 because a better car might have earned more points, but it is also questionable whether your design is right. Even if you have worked on it for a whole year, it can still go wrong in 2022.

In that respect, Haas took a huge gamble and we will have to wait and see how that works out. The same goes for the choice of drivers. With Mick Schumacher, Haas has a talented driver and it will be interesting to see what he can do with a competitive car, but Nikita Mazepin was far behind. The money (from his father) will hopefully make up for a lot in the hunt for better results.

The numbers from the internal duel show at Haas, what you could also see with the naked eye: Mazepin had a far worse year than Schumacher. Both had to debut in Formula 1 with a poor car, but Schumacher clearly extracted more from it.

Mick Schumacher had a strong debut year. Although he didn't manage to score a point, he did get out of Q3 once and left his teammate far behind in qualifying and races. That's all you can do as a driver. The question is to what extent Mazepin is a good measure for Schumacher.

Mick has shown with several crashes that there is still room for improvement. For him it is a pity that there is nobody in the team he can learn from. Romain Grosjean or Kevin Magnussen would have been an ideal benchmark for him to improve on. Now he's on his own a bit.

On the track, the Russian often finds himself spinning around or next to a wall, and if he can keep his car on the track at all, he's much slower than his teammate.

If his teammate were an experienced F1 driver, you could say 'he's just a rookie'. But now his teammate is also a rookie and he is still getting beaten. It could be that Schumacher is a world-class talent and that is why the gap is so big, but even Schumacher's ability can be questioned.