Mick Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel teamed up in this year’s Race of Champions to represent Germany. Unfortunately, the duo had to bow out from the semi-final in the nations cup.
But they both were in the individual competition among all the drivers. And the two faced each other during the semi-final round of the Sunday event.
Probably it was the biggest highlight of the competition to see the two drivers freshly out of F1 take on each other. Moreover, this was the last round before the final, so the stakes for both drivers were high.
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Mick Schumacher defeats Sebastian Vettel
With the two vying, it was expected that they would have an intense battle. And exactly that happened. In the first heat, Vettel and Schumacher started with a bang, but the four-time world champion made errors and got on the wrong track.
He was obligated to go back to his course and lost an immense amount of time while going to the right path. Allowing Schumacher to have a comfortable win in the Super Lite car.
OOF! 😨 It’s a big mistake for Sebastian Vettel and @SchumacherMick is staring at a place in the #ROCSweden final! pic.twitter.com/2PbsMcIWC3
— #ROCSweden (@RaceOfChampions) January 29, 2023
The second heat happened in Polaris, where Vettel seemed more easily. However, in this round, Schumacher also managed to have the edge over his godfather and march into the final.
Schumacher loses out on the final by a close margin
After defeating his mentor, Schumacher had only one thrown to remove to be the ROC champion. But it was a big one in Mattias Ekstrom. The Rally race driver had all the ingredients to defeat the German F1 driver.
And that’s what happened. In Polaris heat, Schumacher was only defeated by the difference of three-tenths of a second. The bigger differential was the Super Lite cars, where Ekstrom had an edge.
Though all credit to the Swedish rally driver, his car’s gearbox was on fire, yet he managed to drive superbly and defeat his opponent to seal his title.
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