In the paddock: Edd Straw

Michael Schumacher’s Benetton years are seen by some as but a prequel to his later success with Ferrari – but it was there that he first demonstrated greatness

“SCHUMACHER WAS ABLE TO TAKE A GOOD, EFFECTIVE UNIT AND MAKE IT BETTER”

To be successful as an elite athlete requires skill, dedication, mental strength, physical excellence and backing from the right people. It’s necessary to have all of those things to be an all-time great, and on top of that something extra. They must also be a transformative force, redefining what it is to be the best in their chosen discipline and influencing those who follow.

Michael Schumacher had that extra in abundance – he proved that with five consecutive world championships with Ferrari from 2000-04. But his double title success with Benetton in 1994-95 is too often relegated to the status of little more than a prequel to those glory years. It shouldn’t be, because this showcased something remarkable about Schumacher that’s too often overlooked when we rightly celebrate the galvanising effect he had on Ferrari.

Before Schumacher’s arrival, Benetton had grown from the days when it failed to qualify 90% of the time in its first season as Toleman back in 1981 to an occasional race winner that was only intermittently a thorn in the side of Williams, Mclaren and Ferrari. But it was Schumacher’s arrival that led to that changing.

“We were a team that were finishing third, fourth, fifth in the championship,” says Pat Symonds, Schumacher’s race engineer for those two titles.“we were an independent team, we weren’t a particularly well-financed team, we were proud of what we were doing. But all of us wanted that step on and it wasn’t obvious to us what we needed. Then Michael came along and we suddenly realised that was a very large part of what we needed.

“I’m not saying the team was perfect and we just needed a good driver, because that’s disingenuous to the drivers before Michael, some of whom were very good indeed. But Michael showed us that it’s not just that ability he had, but the whole approach to racing that all of us needed to change.”

An emerging team signing an established champion as a final piece of the puzzle is not unusual. A top-liner who has been there and done that is often the crucial ingredient that makes a good team into a great one. But Schumacher wasn’t anything approaching that kind of driver back then. Or at least, he shouldn’t have been because he didn’t have that grounding. This is at the crux of the remarkable story of Schumacher at Benetton. He didn’t simply take what he’d learned in another established team and capitalise on it. He was able to look at a good, effective unit like Benetton and help to make it better while simultaneously making himself better. He had the vision, that understanding of what needed to be done to act as a driving force.

It’s easy to forget that Schumacher went into the tumultuous 1994 season with just two F1 victories under his belt. Yet suddenly, once Ayrton Senna was lost, he instantly became the one true megastar in grand prix racing. And he was equal to the challenge.

Regardless of what you think about the controversies of 1994 and the way he clinched the title on the streets of Adelaide after hitting Damon Hill’s Williams, Schumacher was outstanding. This period set the course for Schumacher’s career, and it all came thanks to seizing his unexpected chance at Jordan.

That was another Schumacher strength: seizing a single opportunity. You can draw a straight line from that moment to his becoming central to the building of the Ferrari superteam. Why? Because he redefined the way a driver could build a team around themselves, and some of the outstanding personnel he worked with at Enstone also made their way to Ferrari.

There was another aspect where he raised standards too.

His fitness was exemplary and that’s another defining factor of Schumacher’s contribution to F1 – others had to follow his lead and the expectation of what a grand prix driver was physically changed beyond recognition during his time. It wasn’t as if drivers before Schumacher were overweight, chain-smoking layabouts – they were athletes – but he saw a way to give himself an edge and pursued it. This too was already in evidence during the Benetton years.

He also exhibited his ability to improvise in races, such as his famous drive to second while stuck in fifth gear in the 1994 Spanish Grand Prix. This capacity was within Schumacher, rather than given to him from the outside. That’s what the greats do. They don’t simply become vessels for conventional ideas and aggregate the marginal gains. That’s part of what they do, but they also bring new methods and thinking and impact those around them.

The Schumacher of the Ferrari era was objectively a better driver. He had more experience, continued to raise his game, smoothed out the rough edges and therefore became greater than the Schumacher who won two titles for Benetton. But he was a driver magnified, augmented, rather than transformed.

That’s why this part of his F1 career deserves to be remembered beyond the odd reference to what happened in Spain or Australia. Maybe it wasn’t Schumacher at his very best, but even a Schumacher in his formative years produced some of the greatest feats ever delivered by a grand prix driver.