Schumacher’s nephew is runner-up in debut season despite missing four races

Weekend Racing Wrap

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Michael Schumacher’s nephew David finished his first season in racing cars second overall in his championship despite missing the first four races of the year.

David, the 16-year-old son of Michael’s brother Ralf, finished runner-up to Charlie Weerts (17) who contested all 23 races in the Formula Four United Arab Emirates championship.

Catch up on last weekend’s motor racing highlights below.

NASCAR Cup

Race 3: Las Vegas

Kevin Harvick won for the second weekend in a row in NASCAR, following up his Atalnta triumph with victory at Las Vegas. But it wasn’t all good news for Stewart-Haas racing – Kurt Busch was eliminated in a crash with Chase Elliott earlier in the race.

Also last weekend

Charlie Weerts beat David Schumacher to the Formula Four UAE crown by winning all four races at Dubai Autodrome. Schumacher, son of ex-F1 racer Ralf Schumacher, ended his first racing season second overall despite only joining the championship at the fifth race. Weerts was one of four drivers who started every race which was held.

Weerts, who finished seventh in the championship last year, said he has raised his game on his return. “Like every rookie you make mistakes but with a lot of practice here in the UAE with practice starts, and a lot of races, I make good progress during the year,” he said.

Schumacher described himself as “really happy with my end results of the championship with P2 overall and P1 in the rookie championship.”

Shane van Gisbergen did the double for Holden in the Australian Supercars Championship’s season opening round at former grand prix venue Adelaide, just as he did at the start of last season. His team mate, reigning champion Jamie Whincup, posted his first retirement for 136 races in the second event following a gearbox problem.

Daniel Abt took his first victory in Formula E after disaster struck early leader Felix Rosenqvist. Watch highlights here:

Over to you

What racing action did you watch last weekend? Let us know in the comments.

Next weekend’s racing

The following series are in action next weekend:

  • NASCAR Cup race 4: Phoenix
  • World Rally Championship race 3: Mexico

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Image: David Schumacher via Instagram

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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30 comments on “Schumacher’s nephew is runner-up in debut season despite missing four races”

  1. The article could also be titled ‘Schumacher’s son…’

    I’m sure Ralf loves being sidelined to Michael even when his own kid is succeeding. If he wasn’t an ex-f1 driver and race winner I could understand, but come on, a little respect please.

    1. @selbbin Obviously there’s no intention to disrespect or cause confusion: The very first word in the article is ‘Michael’. But you can’t necessarily always fit all the relevant and compelling information in a single headline for reasons of space/conciseness/readability and other factors.

      1. Fair enough. You do an awesome job so I don’t mean to hassle, but I figure being Ralf’s son is more pertinent than Michael’s Nephew.

        1. I know who Ralf Schumacher is, the difference is that I don’t really care about Ralf Schumacher, or his kid.

          Micheal schumachers nephew on the other hand…. I’m kinda interested.

          This is journalism, and an online article to boot. This is how it works. No need to complain.

      2. @keithcollantine C’mon we know what you are doing here. It’s because of how the internet and journalism works.
        Any f1 fan, any user of this site knows who Ralf is, father of David and multi time f1 gp winner.

        1. @peartree Obviously I’m not saying you don’t know who Ralf is. But when you hear ‘Schumacher’ do you first think ‘Michael’ or ‘Ralf’?

          (Hoping to hear from some NHRA fans answering ‘Tony’ and Batman fans answering ‘Joel’…)

          1. @keithcollantine Since when does that matter?
            The headline is tricky, we could let that pass, as you said “single line” and also

            when you hear ‘Schumacher’ do you first think ‘Michael’ or ‘Ralf’?

            That first paragraph though… This is an f1 and motorsport site, the readers are also fans, racing fans. This looks like something a general, generic news publication would write.

            I honestly thought you were being clever with the wording, just that.

          2. I understand your point, as you don’t want to put ‘Michael’ or ‘Ralf’ in the headline, if you’d said ‘Schumacher’s son’, everyone would’ve assumed Mick, so you went for ‘Schumacher’s nephew’, knowing that everyone would understand it’s David.
            But, I think for the first line, you should’ve said: ‘Ralf Schumacher’s son, David, the nephew of Michael Schumacher, finished his first…’ or words to that effect.

          3. Speaking for myself I haven’t heard a peep about Ralf since he left F1, other than perhaps last year a mention of his son racing, and now this. Meanwhile even though MS is in the tragic and sad state he is, it is his records that continue to be talked about, along with comparisons to him, etc etc practically every race weekend to this day. Far and away I would say people immediately think of Michael not Ralf when the name Schumacher is mentioned. I have no issue with the headline.

            No disrespect meant toward Ralf as he did have some success in F1 although of course only a thimble worth compared to Michael, but I did split a gut the first time I heard Ralf referred to as “Half Schumacher.”

          4. @keithcollantine I thought you meant Mick, you know Schumacher’s newphew.

    2. @selbbin @keithcollantine

      Selbbin, this article should not be titled Schumacher’s Son… because almost everyone in the f1 racing world would expect that to be a reference to Michael, the much more famous and successful of the brothers. So you would have to title it Ralf Schumacher’s Son… which, perhaps, Ralf would have found more respectful, but the fact is that the rest of the world is much more interested in the fact that David Schumacher may have some of the skill of his uncle, not his father.

      1. Indeed, however ralf schumacher was exceptionally quick on his day, just, like some other number 2 drivers, for example coulthard or barrichello, who could have that race where they beat hakkinen or schumacher, they just didn’t have the consistancy, so when a championship contending car presented to ralf (2003) he wasn’t able to battle for the title.

  2. Mick Schumacher is in fact not doing as well. But the nephew is definitely doing better

    1. Mick Schumacher is in F3, which is in the tier above David’s series. It is too early to judge whether David is going to make the transition, though I will admit the signs are more promising.

  3. I must admit, the first thing I thought was “surely they don’t mean Ralf’s son ….Oh, they do!”. I assumed it must be referring to some other Schumacher brother who has a racing son rather than an already established F1 racing Schumacher.

    1. @geekzilla9000 Or how about David Schumacher, rather than just being known as the “son of…” or “nephew of…”. That must get so annoying for progeny.

      1. @psynrg, and yet is it not the case that quite a few here have instinctively fallen for that same trap, tending to refer to drivers in relation to their parents?

      2. @psynrg
        Sure, but when you remove “son of”, or “newphew of’ there isn’t a story. The headline would be “Some guy doesn’t win championship”.

        That’s a link I would click for SURE!

      3. @psynrg It’s even worse when they have the same name, e.g. Carlos Sainz and Carlos Sainz Jnr.

    2. @geekzilla9000
      Prototypicality. Who do you think of when you simply hear the name “Schumacher”? Not Ralf, I’d guess.

  4. @nase, yes, admittedly you’re correct – Schumacher always brings Michael to mind. But I still feel that Ralf Schumacher’s son is more important a relationship than Michael Schumacher’s nephew.

    But, I think @psynrg has the best point here – just refer to him as David Schumacher. That name will undoubtedly lead people recoginsing that surname and clicking the article. I’d never heard of him before but I would prefer to think of him as a Racing Driver in his own merit rather than ‘Son of’ or ‘nephew of’.

    It reminds me of the film director Duncan Jones, he purposefully avoided any links with his dad as he wanted to be recognised for his own work and not for being the son of David Bowie!

  5. Wait? 136 aussie supercars/v8, a touring car, stock car not smashed in 136 consecutive races. NASCAR be like 😭😭😭

  6. Kinship terms aside, I can’t help but question how meaningful finishing 2nd in the UAE F4 is.
    As the article correctly states, only four drivers took part in all rounds, and even though a total of 21 drivers took part in at least one race, the grid size at any given race was diminutive: Only 8 drivers took part in the 4 races of the final event, and that was the grid size for 16 of the 20 scheduled races.
    Additionally, some of the drivers who only participated in a few races seemed to be at least as competitive as the regular starters. This is especially true of Caio Collet (7/23 races), Oliver Caldwell (8/23), William Alatalo (8/23), and Leon Köhler (3/23), who won 8 of the 15 races they took part in, all achieving points hauls that were either comparable to, or greater than, the championships leaders’.

    1. These are good points. It’s promising, but a summer in a more competitive F4 championship (entirely feasible, as most of the haven’t started yet and there are likely to still be vacancies) would perhaps be a better idea than skipping straight to F3.

      Thankfully, that appears to be the plan – David’s next series will be German F4.

  7. Poor Ralf… he was once “the other Schumacher” and now he is the “other, other, other Schumacher”!

  8. Luke Harrison
    5th March 2018, 20:16

    All these people complaining about the use of Schumacher’s nephew and Ralf Schumacher’s son that no one seems to be enraged that BWT continues to force pink helmets on all the drivers in their cars.

    1. It’s no laughing matter.

    2. The pink cars I like. But, the pink helmets are just … ugh.

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