Warning for Ilott ahead of Formula 1 debut

Callum Ilott has been warned to tread carefully by Haas team principal Guenther Steiner at a potentially rain-lashed Nürburgring ahead of his Formula 1 debut on Friday.

F2 title-chaser Ilott is to replace Haas driver Romain Grosjean in first practice for the Eifel Grand Prix as Ferrari utilises its relationship with its power-unit partners to provide its academy drivers with an F1 run-out.

F2 championship leader Mick Schumacher will also be on track at the Nürburgring with Alfa Romeo, while Robert Shwartzman will drive for the Italian team in first practice ahead of the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The programs for Ilott and Schumacher, however, could be tricky given the forecast for continual rain, with Steiner, in particular, to call for a degree of caution from the Briton ahead of his session.

Explaining what will unfold and what he will be expecting from Ilott, Steiner said: “The program will be the same as it would be for one of our regular drivers.

"Maybe we tell him [Ilott] to be a little bit more careful when he goes out there as at the moment rain is predicted.

"Otherwise, we just always try and work through our FP1 program and do the best we can knowing that for a driver in his first weekend session in a Formula 1 car, there’s a lot of pressure, a lot of unknowns.

"We don’t look too much at the time, we’re looking at his consistency and the feedback he can bring to the team.

"That’s where we judge a driver, not on outright pace, because 90 minutes is not a long time to be sitting in a car like a Formula 1 car.

"We’ll just try to manage that we get feedback and that he gets a good experience with us.”

With F1 revisiting the Nürburgring for the first time in seven years, Steiner is hoping the circuit will provide a spectacle as exciting as the one delivered by Mugello for the Tuscan Grand Prix on its F1 debut in September.

“Hopefully we can get a Mugello-style race," added Steiner. "That was an interesting one for all the teams, all the spectators. Basically, it was great for everyone involved in it. The unknowns just kept coming towards us.

"Hopefully, the same thing happens this weekend at the Nürburgring. As I said before, rain is the prediction for Germany, that will make things even more interesting.

"The best outcome will be if we have a good race, with lots of variables, and from our perspective, to come home with some points – something we haven’t achieved a lot of this year.”

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