Ferrari-backed Robert Shwartzman says he still sees a chance of graduating to Formula 1 long-term after accepting his prospects of stepping up in 2022 have gone.
Shwartzman won the 2019 Formula 3 title and claimed fourth place in last year’s Formula 2 standings, behind Mick Schumacher, Callum Ilott and Yuki Tsunoda.
Shwartzman has taken two wins this year and holds third in the championship, 36 points behind Prema team-mate Oscar Piastri, with Guanyu Zhou in-between.
Only one seat remains on the 2022 Formula 1 grid, at Alfa Romeo, with Zhou among the contenders for the vacancy.
“I think at this stage I don’t have enough results where I can say ‘look guys, I’m winning, I have a huge gap and why are you not talking about me’,” said Shwartzman.
“I think I still need to learn and improve myself in Formula 2, I have this second half [of the season] to do that, so [I’m] at this stage where I’m going to improve myself, then I will think a bit more about Formula 1.
“Obviously the situation is a bit tight now in Formula 1 as there is only one seat left but anyway I don’t think about it because there is still the future, there are still other years.
“My target is just to do the best in Formula 2, get the best results possible, get the championship and after that we’ll see what’s going to happen.”
Shwartzman has targeted qualifying as a key area to improve across the remaining three events.
Shwartzman grabbed a front-row spot in Monaco but has yet to qualify higher than sixth anywhere else, and has twice started the Feature Race from outside of the top 10.
“It’s still early to look at it,” he said of the standings. “It’s very tight, I think if I want to do this step up and make the difference I need to improve my qualifying.
“In the race performance we [have been] competitive and strong, but most of the time I’ve made my life more difficult by not starting where I’d like to be.
“We have Sochi, Saudi, and Abu Dhabi, where I will try to find every little thing to improve the qualifying performance.
“If I manage to do that I think that’s where the championship is going to go my way.”
Discussion about this post