Bye Schumacher

Michael raced in his 250th and last ever Formula One race a couple of Sundays ago and I’m missing him already. Unfortunately he didn’t go out on the high note he hoped for of winning his 8th Drivers World Championship, but it was a fantastic drive to watch seeing him get up to 4th from 20th place after a puncture. He and Felipe were treated by Ferrari to engines that redlined at an extraordinarily high 20,000 rpm that weekend and they both drove spectacularly. I loved it when Michael passed Kimi Raikkonen in an awesome manoeuvre, just to show his replacement who’s still the king. I always prefer to watch Michael when he’s racing from behind and seems to pull the impossible out of the car, rather than see him coast to a victory effortlessly from pole.

Michael tends to have a love him or hate him, type fan base, and I’m in the former, but he does test our loyalty sometimes with episodes of apparently purposely cutting drivers off to secure wins and this year stalling on the final qualifying lap to try to ensure Fernando Alonso couldn’t top his pole time. We’ll never know for sure what really happened, but even assuming the worst, I still manage to forgive him. Even though he races with robotic perfection most of the time, he is still human and occasionally makes errors in judgement when he has to make split second decisions when driving at speeds around 300kph. These errors are put in the spotlight, because of his number one status, more than other drivers who make mistakes as well. His conviction of winning-at-all-costs obviously has its part to play as well, but if it weren’t for those convictions he wouldn’t be number one and we wouldn’t be discussing this at all.

What also sets Michael ahead of the rest is that he left Benetton, which was the team he won his first two drivers world championships with, to join Ferrari, the then floundering team that hadn’t been competitive for over a decade, and turned the team around. It always amazes me when I hear of a driver who just won a world championship, wants to leave and join an uncompetitive team. Damon Hill did it in 96 and wasn’t really on the radar after that. But Michael essentially built the Ferrari team up around him to quickly bring it back to winning form; eventually creating a formidable team that he won a record-breaking 5 championships in a row with. He did more than other drivers ever did behind the scene and understood every aspect of the car as well as being a master on the track. That’s why the Italian Tifosi (passionate Ferrari fans) embraced the German into their pride of the Italian marquee. What remains to be seen is if Alonso’s punt of leaving his championship winning team of Renault will pay off when he joins McLaren next year. McLaren can be fast, but are too unreliable at the moment with Kimi not winning a single race this season.

Personally, I’ll miss him because he’s a role model. He had what I would say as one of the best jobs in the world and he was the number one. He showed that determination, single-mindedness and putting in extra work on top of a natural talent pay off. Now I just need to get my first drive…