Schumacher
ONE OF F1’S TRUE GREATS – AND AN UNDOUBTED FERRARI LEGEND
HE MAY NOT have been ‘the greatest ever’ that seven World Championships and 91 Grand Prix victories suggest, but Michael Schumacher was the greatest paradox and anti-hero. His subliminal skill too often defaulted to on-track thuggery rivalled only by Giuseppe Farina, the first World Champion, who had Marcel Lehoux and Laszlo Hartmann’s blood on his hands.
His F1 break came in Belgium in 1991 when Jordan’s Bertrand Gachot was jailed for spraying a London taxi driver with mace. Schumacher was so quick during a test at Silverstone that the team tried to slow him down after only four laps. But he was even more sensational when he got to Spa-Francorchamps, qualifying seventh. Listening in the debrief as Andrea de Cesaris explained that the Jordan felt very nervous in fifth gear through Blanchimont, he offered quietly: ‘It feels much more comfortable if you kept it flat in sixth there.’ Schuey had arrived.
He burned out the clutch at the start, then dumped Jordan for Benetton. Ayrton Senna, before he died at Imola in 1994, was convinced the German’s car was still running traction control, which had been outlawed the previous year. The subsequent discovery of the mysterious ‘Option 13’ software for regulating traction in his Benetton’s electronics did nothing to alleviate suspicion that something was amiss. And the manner in which he drove Damon Hill off the road in the finale in Adelaide, clinching the title despite damaging his own car after making an unforced error and hitting a wall, cast him as the new villain.
He dominated 1995 in a Renault-engined Benetton, but his greatness emerged when Jean Todt persuaded him to join Ferrari for 1996. Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger had been quick, but Todt wanted the best. Things took a while to gel technically, but Todt’s success luring Rory Byrne and Ross Brawn from Benetton for 1997 could not be destabilised by interventions from Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo.
Schumacher was a brilliant test driver; demanding yet hugely supportive; fit, to a hitherto unknown level; knew exactly what he wanted from his cars; and always delivered on track. Between 2000 and 2004, Ferrari was unbeatable. ‘If God had wanted to create the perfect racing driver,’ his manager Willi Weber declared, ‘he’d have made him like Michael.’
There were countless moments of brilliance. In Barcelona in 1996 he scored his first victory for Ferrari, in torrential rain. In Hungary in 1998, Brawn told him he needed qualifying laps in the race to claw back 25 seconds in only 19 laps; he obliged, and won. Success over McLaren’s Mika Häkkinen at Suzuka in 2000 made him Ferrari’s first World Champion since 1979. The following year in Malaysia he won despite an agonising 72-second pit stop, while in Austria in 2003 he won even after his Ferrari caught fire during a pit stop. Small wonder that the tifosi adored him, and still do.
Brawn identified his ability to adapt to different cars, tyres or conditions as a prime strength, allied to his fearsome speed – and a ruthless will to win. He lost the 1997 title after driving into Jacques Villeneuve in Jerez but coming off worse; the French-Canadian took the championship and the FIA annulled his own results. And in 2006 he parked in Monaco’s Rascasse corner, preventing title successor Fernando Alonso taking pole for Renault.
Nothing better illustrated how his greatness will forever be tainted by his tactics than the incident with former team-mate Rubens Barrichello, whom he nearly squeezed into the pit wall in Hungary in 2010. ‘It was a horrible move, the most dangerous I have ever gone through,’ the Brazilian declaimed.
‘You get sympathy for free, but you have to earn envy,’ Schumacher declared. ‘Whoever comes second is always going to get more sympathy than the winner.’
‘Successful people have to be uncompromising,’ Brawn said. ‘The drivers who criticise Michael aren’t seven-time World Champions.’ And yet this was the man who donated $10m to the 2004 tsunami victims. That gesture provided a deeper insight into his real persona away from the track, and makes even more poignant his current tragic situation following his skiing accident in 2013.
Whether he really was the greatest-ever depends on how you rate statistics, and how much you value sportsmanship as part of a true great’s make-up.