Schumacher joins Ascari in Ferrari book of greats, writes Richard Williams
Tradition was not the first thing on Michael Schumacher’s mind when he signed his contract with the Scuderia Ferrari back in 1996. In fact it was not on his mind at all. He professed to know little and seemed to care less about the history of the most illustrious name in grand prix racing. As the epitome of the modern racing driver, he was interested in the here and now.
Not surprisingly, his five seasons with the Italian team have deepened his understanding of the myths and legends that gradually created the worldwide popularity of the red cars. And the more he learnt, the more he appreciated that he had taken a role in a story bigger than himself.
On Sunday, however, by becoming the first Ferrari driver to win back-to-back championships since Alberto Ascari in 1952 and 1953, he connected himself to the Ferrari story in a way more profound than either he or, very probably, any other current member of the team may know.
Ascari was the team’s first champion. He won his title five years after the first car bearing the Ferrari name had taken to the road, amid the chaos of post-war Italy. That alone made the man nicknamed Ciccio “Tubby” a figure of special significance. But the connection with the firm and its remarkable founder goes much deeper.
More than half a century earlier, a young racing driver named Enzo Ferrari had taken part in his first event as a driver. One Sunday in 1919 he arrived for the start of the Parma-to-Poggio di Berceto hillclimb, in the foothills of the Apennines, at the wheel of a car built by the CMN company of Turin, which had just switched from its Great War role of making four-wheel-drive artillery tractors.
Ferrari, 21 years old, was working as a test and delivery driver for the company when he made his debut in the hillclimb, over a 50km course up the slopes of Mount Piantonia. He came a respectable 12th overall, and third in his class, but the winner, in a record-breaking time, was a man already becoming famous for his exploits Antonio Ascari, already the father of a small boy called Alberto.
A year later Ferrari and Antonio Ascari became colleagues when they both joined the Alfa Romeo team. “Antonio was a man of real character, exceptionally energetic and truly brave,” Ferrari wrote in his memoirs. “He was utterly fearless, with a talent for improvisation the sort of driver we used to call a garibaldino, meaning the reckless, intuitive kind who didn’t scrupulously walk the course in advance but felt their way round every bend, getting closer to the very limits of tyre grip as lap followed lap.”
But there was more to admire about him than just a talent for driving. Ascari had established his own car-sales business in Milan and Ferrari, who had ambitions in that direction, was interested in the close commercial relationship he had developed with Alfa Romeo. By 1925, when Ascari was killed in a race and his own career as a potential top-line driver had come to an end, Ferrari had established himself as Alfa Romeo’s distributor for the Emilia-Romagna region, and was on his way to starting his own racing team.
“If he came upon a technical problem that he couldn’t solve,” Ferrari said of Ascari, “he was not afraid to ask for suggestions from someone who knew more than he did.” This attitude, and its extension into a readiness to hire the best designers and engineers available, was to underlie the later success of Ferrari as a constructor.
Ferrari and his team-mates were among the thousands who attended Ascari’s funeral in Milan. While flowers were dropped from an aeroplane, another of the drivers lifted up the seven-year-old Alberto Ascari, newly fatherless, and told him: “Some day you will reach the heights, as he did.”
Unlike his father or Ferrari’s other favourites, Tazio Nuvolari and Gilles Villeneuve Alberto was never a garibaldino. He was a fast and consistent driver who preferred to win races from the front rather than through hand-to-hand battles, and after winning his second title he left Ferrari after a contract row.
Of the two Ascaris, Schumacher is probably closer to Antonio. He does his homework more assiduously than any of his contemporaries, but he also likes a fight. No doubt Enzo Ferrari, who died in 1988 at the age of 90, would have admired the ruthlessness of the German driver who, together with the team manager Jean Todt, technical director Ross Brawn, and engineers Rory Byrne and Paolo Martinelli, has dragged the famous name back to the pinnacle of Formula One, and seems intent on keeping it there.