So now Michael Schumacher stands alone at the summit of grand prix racing, his sixth world championship finally taking him clear of Juan Manuel Fangio and a 46-year-old record that few who were alive in Fangio’s time ever thought to see equalled.
There will be champagne and laughter in Kerpen, the small town west of Cologne where Schumacher learnt to race go-karts as an infant, encouraged by his parents. In Maranello, where he has conspired with the Ferrari team to establish an unprecedented degree of dominance over formula one, the church bells will be rung with special vigour.
Elsewhere, for all the headlines, there may be a more equivocal response from those who question his right to be ranked above the very greatest in the 100-year history of the sport.
For all his vast following and the extra income it generates from the sale of T-shirts and baseball caps, Schumacher will never unite the sport’s followers in the way that Fangio — or Tazio Nuvolari, Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna — did, compelling a mixture of admiration and affection from all quarters. His career is too chequered for that. But results count for most in the end and, at 34, Schumacher is entitled to let his medals do the talking.
He came into grand prix racing in 1991 as one of the sport’s prodigies, his gifts apparent as soon as he took the wheel of a Jordan-Ford in the Belgian Grand Prix, as an emergency replacement for the jailed Bertrand Gachot. Until that point he had looked nothing more than an averagely gifted member of Mercedes-Benz’s squad of young sports car drivers. In the cockpit of a formula one car, however, he found himself and his destiny.
Despite the effects of a filthy cold, he qualified the unfamiliar car in eighth position for his first race, ahead of his teammate, the vastly more experienced Andrea de Cesaris. At 22, driving a car way beyond anything in his previous experience, Schumacher dominated one of grand prix racing’s most demanding circuits.
On race day his clutch broke after only 500m, but even in those brief seconds he had already overtaken three other cars. Although he failed to finish the race, in every other sense, he had arrived.
He had made such an impression that before the next race he was the subject of a tug of love. Flavio Briatore, a man with little background in the sport but with a sharp nose for talent, had intervened on behalf of the Benetton team to wrench Schumacher away from Eddie Jordan.
A year later, back at Spa in a Benetton, Schumacher rewarded Briatore’s judgement with his first grand prix win, achieved through the first of the strategic masterstrokes that have distinguished his career. As mist gave way to rain, the German decided to come into the pits and change to wet-weather tyres before his rivals, giving himself a winning advantage.
Two years later Schumacher took his first championship in much less happy circumstances. The way he won the first two races of the season aroused the suspicions of Senna, whose Williams could not keep pace with the Benetton. Like many other observers, the Brazilian believed that not everyone was playing according to formula one’s strict technical regulations. When Senna was killed in the next race, at Imola, he was trying desperately hard to hold on to the lead, ahead of a car he believed to be illegal.
Schumacher fell foul of the law later that season when he was banned for two races after ignoring a black flag at Silverstone. His team were also found to have hidden illegal traction-control software within the car’s engine-management systems, although they claimed it had never been used. In the final race, in Adelaide, he preserved a one-point lead when his car crashed into the Williams of his rival, Damon Hill, thus removing them both from the race and giving himself the title.
Although his 1995 championship was more clear-cut, rumours nevertheless continued to surround the Benetton team’s attitude to the rules. A confident young man, Schumacher was widely disparaged for his perceived arrogance by many who could not gainsay the magnitude of his talent.
The following year he moved to Ferrari, a team of unmatched heritage but without a world champion in 17 years. To some, it seemed an odd move. Schumacher knew nothing and cared less about Ferrari’s history, upsetting those who liked to see a different sort of driver in the cockpit of the red car. In his second season there was another blot on the record, when he tried to drive Jacques Villeneuve off the road in the final race and was punished by exclusion from the final champion-ship standings.
But his combination of cold calculation, utter dedication and sublime talent turned out to be just what the Italian team needed, and once he had been joined by a group of former Benetton associates — the technical director Ross Brawn, the designer Rory Byrne and the software expert Tad Czapski — there was no stopping his progress.
After four years of fairly steady improvement against the standard set by a new chief rival, Mika Hakkinen, in 2000 Schumacher raced to nine grand prix victories and a title which meant he would never have to pay for a meal or a drink in Italy again. And the rumours of rule-bending had followed him from Benetton to Ferrari.
When nine more victories in 2001 were followed by an unprecedented 11 last year, he drew abreast of Fangio’s record. But the moment of triumph was soured by events earlier in the season, notably in Austria, where his teammate, Rubens Barrichello, had been ordered to slow down and allow Schumacher to win. Team orders are as old as motor racing, but Ferrari handled the manoeuvre with such a lack of subtlety that even some of their fans were appalled.
This year Schumacher has gained extra satisfaction by winning his sixth title in the way Manchester United won the premiership last spring, by coming from behind against strong opposition. So though this has not been the most crushing of his championships, or the most serene, it has drawn on reserves of skill and resilience, allowing him to prove that even after more than a decade in formula one he retains the competitive ferocity and ruthlessness that marked him out early.
Against the disparagement of his critics, Schumacher’s admirers can point to his endless appetite for the sort of hard work that bores some drivers, to his close relationships with his team at all levels, and to his warm family life.
There is certainly nothing precious or pretentious about Schumacher. He skis, rides, plays football (to a good standard) as often as he can, adores his two kids, adopts stray dogs, and still races karts from time to time. For unalloyed respect, however, he may have to wait a while yet. —