Alan HenryMotor racing
Ferrari are poised to offer Michael Schumacher a virtual blank cheque to prevent him defecting to the McLaren-Mercedes team in 1999, a year before the end of his contract.
Fiat’s president Gianni Agnelli is said to have sanctioned a o52-million package to ensure Schumacher stays at Ferrari to the end of the 2002 season.
That such a deal should come to light a few days after a furious Schumacher was forced to abandon his car with a blown-up engine on the sixth lap of the Australian Grand Prix, while the McLaren’s powered to first and second places, is no coincidence.
In addition, the Italian team have also made an offer which would see Schumacher become a roving ambassador with the company for as long as he wished after retiring from the cockpit. The three-year deal, starting in 2000, would sustain Schumacher’s posit ion as earning the second highest salary in sporting history at o17,33-million, a figure bettered only by Michael Jordan.
It would also help him consolidate his place as the fourth highest earning sportsman of the present era, with his total annual income from driving and outside endorsements estimated at o24-million. According to Forbes magazine, this is bettered only by J ordan (o53-million) and the boxers Evander Holyfield (o36-million) and Oscar de la Hoya (o26-million).
When pressed this week on the Ferrari offer, Schumacher’s manager Willi Weber said: “I don’t want to say anything. There have been no negotiations so far.”
Schumacher is believed to have a clause in his contract permitting him to leave at the end of this season if his Ferrari F300 does not prove competitive enough for him to mount a realistic challenge for the world championship.
When it was launched two months ago, Ferrari’s sporting director Jean Todt said the team had to take the title this year and that no more excuses were acceptable.
Yet, despite Schumacher’s retirement at Melbourne, his team-mate Eddie Irvine finished a strong fourth and reported that the new car was much more competitive than last season’s machine.
Schumacher has long-established links with Mercedes-Benz, the McLaren team’s engine supplier, and the prospect of the Stuttgart car-maker powering a German driver to the world championship at some time in the future could be a prospect too tempting to ig nore.
In 1990 Schumacher was selected as a member of the Sauber-Mercedes long-distance sports car racing team after he had displayed winning form in Formula 3. He was instantly quick and remained in the Sauber-Mercedes squad until August 1991 when he was snapp ed up by the Jordan Formula One team, making his grand prix debut in Belgium.
After that race, he was snatched by the Benetton team. He drove for them for the next three seasons, winning the world championship in 1994 and 1995.
His much-heralded transfer to Ferrari at the start of the 1996 season triggered a dramatic upsurge in form for the Italian team, but Schumacher’s patience will be sorely tried if there are too many repeats of the dismal showing in Melbourne.
Irvine may well be right when he says that “Michael is the best driver, the rest of us are all just number twos”. Yet with the performance advantage being exerted by the McLaren-Mercedes likely to continue, Schumacher’s job looks set to get harder.