• German Grand Prix - FP2

Schumacher apologises for crash

Michael Schumacher crashed towards the end of FP2 © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• German Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Michael Schumacher

• Teams:
• Mercedes

Michael Schumacher apologised to his team for his shunt during second practice at the German Grand Prix on Friday, admitting he lost concentration while on the radio.

Schumacher lost the rear of his Mercedes entering the stadium section as he appeared to put a wheel on the white line marking the perimeter of the circuit. On a wet track with intermediate tyres fitted, he slewed across the circuit and removed his front and rear wings against the inside barrier as well as damaging his suspension.

"The way I ended the second session was obviously not part of the plan and I'm sorry that my mistake has given my guys even more work to do this evening," Schumacher said. "I simply slid off track because I lost a little concentration: we were talking on the radio and I was altering some settings at the same time. But that's all part of the game.

"Overall, the session went ok, even though we didn't do too much running in the first session because the conditions were a bit too inconsistent. I think that qualifying will probably be wet tomorrow, so today's weather was useful in that respect. Now we need to do more work on the computer to tease out the insights we weren't able to get from our track running."

Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn said Schumacher's accident was not a major setback.

"We had two very productive sessions here at Hockenheim today to start our home Grand Prix weekend. We had some new things to try on the car which we had the opportunity to try in the dry and the wet. The car seems reasonably well balanced but we will have a good look at all of the data tonight to see how we want to proceed tomorrow. Michael's incident on the wet track at the end was a little unfortunate but it didn't cost us any running time."

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