In the end he overstayed his welcome by a year, maybe two. Had Michael Schumacher chosen to retire at the end of 2004, with the laurel wreath from a seventh world title round his neck, he would not have left the world with the memory of that creepy expression of bogus innocence as he attempted to explain away his inexcusable behaviour during the final qualifying session at Monaco in May of this year.
With his rivals on their final lap, he made a desperate bid to protect his pole position by parking his Ferrari across the track at the Rascasse hairpin after feigning a loss of control.
As he improvised an excuse so unconvincing that several other drivers openly accused him of lying, images from the less admirable episodes of his career came back into focus.
We remembered Damon Hill’s Williams bouncing off Schumacher’s apparently stricken Benetton at Adelaide in 1994, an incident that handed the German his first world championship, and the sight of a Ferrari being deliberately steered into the side of Jacques Villeneuve’s Williams at Jerez in 1997, in an equally cynical attempt to prevent the French-Canadian driver from taking the title.
These were the incidents that led Villeneuve to make the startling claim in a recent interview that his rival ”will not be remembered” once he has gone into retirement. An exaggeration, of course, but Schumacher will not be remembered with the sort of universal warmth accorded to the greatest of his predecessors.
No other world champion resorted to such cheap tactics. If Ayrton Senna was the motor-racing equivalent of John McEnroe, a genius who sometimes appeared to believe in his own divine right to transgress the normal rules of sporting behaviour, then Schumacher resembled Jimmy Connors, a shrewd operator whose abuses of etiquette were cold-bloodedly aimed at the protection of his own competitive advantage.
All of which was to say nothing about the dodges that Schumacher’s teams were often accused of using in order to get around the sport’s technical regulations, starting with the exposure of Benetton’s traction-control software in 1994, the year Senna died while trying to stay ahead of a car he believed to be illegal.
That was one Michael Schumacher. The other could be seen from the outside of the entry to Copse Corner, the fast right-hander at the end of Silverstone’s pits straight, any time he competed in the British Grand Prix. This was the Schumacher who drove his car the way the violinist Maxim Vengerov plays a Bach partita, with a visible passion pushing him up to and sometimes beyond the limit of his instrument’s capabilities.
To watch the German hurling his Ferrari into the corner was to glimpse how motor racing in the 21st century might, for all its reliance on software-based technology, retain the raw essence of the appeal that built a following for the sport in the years of Nuvolari, Fangio, Moss and Clark.
Schumacher was on the verge of equalling Fangio’s record of five titles when Ross Brawn, his technical director first at Benetton and then at Ferrari, was asked what single quality made the German so successful. It was, Brawn said, the refined judgment and absolute commitment that enabled Schumacher to enter fast corners — such as Copse — at the highest possible velocity, allowing him to sustain greater speed through the corners and, as a consequence, to be faster on the exits.
”Lots of drivers can come through the middle of a corner and make their exit well,” Brawn said, ”particularly with the traction-control devices we have now. You get to the middle or the exit and you just put your foot on the throttle and the systems will take care of it.
”But when it comes to corner entry, there’s no substitute for driver ability. That’s where you see the difference in bravery and skill.”
Brawn also referred to Schumacher’s sheer consistency, something that car-to-pits data telemetry permits an engineer to observe with micrometric intimacy.
”Michael can drive 15 or 20 laps of a race and everything is within a few centimetres on each lap. And that’s what can make the difference in a race. Sometimes people get close to him in qualifying, but in a race he just builds and builds and that small gap becomes greater because he hits the limit all the time — every corner, every time.”
A keenness to involve himself in the life of his team also marked Schumacher out from his rivals, and his success turned it into a pattern that all his younger rivals needed to follow if they were to have a hope of competing with him.
His appetite was inexhaustible — and not just for racing itself, although he never needed much of an excuse to jump into a go-kart and relive the triumphs of his boyhood in competition with later generations of karting champions.
From the start of his career he had a habit of staying late in the paddock — talking to his mechanics, understanding what they were doing, establishing a bond. ”He has no airs or graces,” Brawn said. ”His work ethic is an example to everybody.
”People say Michael Schumacher runs the Ferrari team. That’s not true. What Michael Schumacher does is set an example to the Ferrari team. That’s different. It’s very, very important.
”If you need any extra incentive, you look at the job he’s doing and you get it. If you’re finding it a bit tough to get up in the morning, just think that he’s been up for two hours because he had to fly down for a test.”
And his enthusiasm never waned. Last year, for instance, when the team was struggling to answer the challenge posed by Fernando Alonso’s Renault, the seven-time champion covered more miles in testing than any of his competitors, some of whom view such work as a chore.
”There is no other team that raises the emotions compared to Ferrari,” he once said when asked to describe the special magic of winning races with the legendary scuderia.
Schumacher’s love of his job and the way he went about it constituted a saving grace in the eyes of some who were otherwise not attracted to his personality.
Wealth came as no burden to the son of a kart-track operator from an unpretentious corner of Germany, and he made the most of the comforts it provided, but his dedication to work and family never wavered.
Even in his darkest hours, that second and genuinely admirable Schumacher could put in an appearance. Punished for his stupidity in Monaco by being forced to start from the pit lane, he emerged from Saturday’s disgrace to produce a Sunday drive of the highest intensity and majestic poise on the most demanding of circuits.
He could finish no higher than fifth, but his performance made it clear that, even at 37, his sublime skills and instincts remained intact; if he was indeed to stay on too long, then it was fitting that he should spend his final season fighting hard to regain his title.
His departure clears the way for a new generation to squabble over the laurels, but they will do so, for a while at least, in the shadow of his virtuosity. — Â