sameerrao
09-10-2006, 07:23 PM
The best driver of my generation. Lets keep a thread to remember him by. I am thinking we can put up articles,pictures, videos, whatever....
His Poignant Farewell Speech
“It has been a very special day and to finish it in this style as we have been doing today, looking at the championship as well, but much more at what’s going happen somehow in the future.
I mean there has been a lot of discussion for sometime which concerns my future and so on, and I think all the fans and motorsport interested people, they have a right to be explained what’s going to happen.
I’m sorry, it may have taken longer than some of you wanted but you have to find the right moment and we feel this is the right moment.
To make it short, this is going to be my last Monza race. At the end of this year I have decided together with the team that I’m going to retire from racing.
It has been an exceptional, really exceptional time what motorsport in more than 30 years has given to me.
I really loved every single moment of the good and the bad ones. Those moments make life so special.
In particular I should thank my family starting with obviously my Dad, my passed-away Mum and obviously my wife and my kids who at all times supported what I was doing.
And without their support, without their strengths to survive in this business and this sport, and to perform, I think it would have been impossible.
I can’t be thankful enough to my family, but as well to all my mates at the Benetton time and obviously especially at the Ferrari days when I have made so many friends.
I have so many great guys in that team and it has been a really tough decision to decide to not work together at this level with all my friends and engineers and everybody.
They are just so great.
But one day the day has to come, and I felt at a point that this is the moment.
As well, in terms of timing the decision I thought that it was fair to find that moment that Felipe [Massa] has a chance to decide his future, because I think he is a very great guy.
He has been doing a very great job to the team, very supportive, a great team-mate and there was a moment for him to decide his future and there was no point for me to take my decision any later than his decision has been taken.
And this was the conclusion.
As well, of in a way my future replacement, it’s a driver that at some stage the team will tell, but I always was pleased and I know a long time ago, to hear that he was the person.
And now I would just like to concentrate on this last three wins and make it, or finish it in style, and hopefully win the championship.
We have done a big step today for that and I really look forward.
I want to thank everybody who has been on my way, or supporting me at all stages, there has been a lot of people.
Thank you very much."
Tributes from fellow drivers ...
Felipe Massa – Ferrari team-mate
“It's a big pleasure just to have the experience to race with him, and I'm more close to Michael even since 2003 when I was test driver. He's a very nice guy, we get along quite well and he's very professional, he's definitely the most complete driver in Formula 1, in my opinion.
Ross Brawn – Ferrari technical director
"Everybody will miss Michael, whoever they are. When he does retire, it will be a big event for everyone, and I think someone of his ability, someone of his experience, and someone of his involvement will be very badly missed. But F1 goes on, Ferrari goes on..."
Fernando Alonso – Renault
“I think it is always good to race with great champions and with people with a lot of wins, pole positions, fastest laps and all the records Michael had. So it is always good to beat him. It is better than the other ones.”
Giancarlo Fisichella – Renault
“Formula 1 will miss Michael. I don't think we will miss Michael in the football games because even if he retires, I think he will play with us. He loves playing football. He's a great driver, he's a nice guy and he is still fit, he's still quick.
“The only time when we can talk together is in the football match for charity. And he is a very nice guy and especially when I bring my family and my children he is nice guy he talks and he plays with the children so you can see he is a father like me, a normal guy”
Jarno Trulli – Toyota
“It's been a pleasure for me to race with him, and obviously he has achieved a lot. It's not up to me to say how much, but the numbers speak for themselves. We will miss him a little bit as a driver, we will miss him in the football matches, because that has been very nice this year but on the other hand, I think it's his own life and he has to get on with it.
“He's given a lot to Formula 1, he's given a lot to Ferrari and it's normal that a lot of people will miss him.”
Tonio Liuzzi – Toro Rosso
“Yeah, of course it would be a big shame if he retires because he's the greatest champion of the last ten years for sure and to race with him has always been pretty fair and he has given us some good lessons on TV. He's always been a great guy and a great driver to talk about racing and sports with but for sure, that's life.
“Sometime he thought maybe he had to continue a bit more with his family and I agree with his decision if he will retire. It's just a decision which arises once in your life, the time when you have to say it's over.”
Ron Dennis – McLaren boss
“I have had some great moments with him and they are probably off-circuit and I think you spoil it if you share it. And I don't offend you, but I immediately remembered a particular moment that was very good fun, but I don't think he'd particularly want me to share it with you."
Norbert Haug – Mercedes motorsport boss
“I think he has had a remarkable career. Everyone knows that. You only have to look at the statistics and he has contributed a lot to the sport. I remember very well where it all started and he was a German Formula Three driver and he came to junior team and that is just 15 years ago and its not too long since he started and so they are absolutely great memories.
“One thing I can tell you from my memories and I can tell you when I came to Mercedes-Benz and he was already a group C driver and he was getting out of the pits and he was quicker than Jochen Mass in his fastest race lap and I thought ‘that is something' and it was.”
A (balanced?) tribute by James Allen - ITV-F1 commentator ..
The curtain falls
Although everyone has been talking about it all weekend, it is still hard to accept that Michael Schumacher has called time on his F1 career.
Our careers have overlapped; I started in 1990, he made his debut at Spa in 1991.
It feels like a very long time ago that he burst onto the scene at Spa in the green 7Up Jordan, because it is a long time - 250 races.
I’ll never forget standing at the top of Eau Rouge during Friday qualifying (as it was then) with veteran journalist Denis Jenkinson.
We had no diamond vision screens then but Jenks reeled off the top five as he saw it, based on their speed from La Source and through Eau Rouge. He had Schumacher fifth behind Senna, Mansell, Patrese and Berger and he was right of course.
The Jordan looked amazing and it was this 22-year-old called Michael Schumacher at the wheel.
Jenks said that we should keep an eye on this boy. He looked like the real thing.
A week later I was having dinner in London with an F1 crowd which included John Watson. He took a call, I believe from Eddie Jordan, and when he hung up he said, “Schumacher has gone to Benetton!”
After just one race the guy was the hottest property in the sport.
The history
Frank Williams said that he and all the other team owners were kicking themselves in Spa that they hadn’t spotted Schumacher’s potential sooner.
Ross Brawn, then at Benetton, certainly had, racing against him in sportscars, Ross with Jaguar, Michael with Sauber-Mercedes. Mercedes were not in F1 in 1991 and by the time they arrived Schumacher was lost to them.
They had several big efforts at getting him, but failed each time.
So it was Flavio Briatore, from 1991-95 and then Jean Todt who had the principal benefit of running Schumacher in their car and he repaid both of them in spades.
Statistically at least, he is the greatest driver in history.
He has re-written the history books and raised the bar in terms of what is expected of a Grand Prix driver.
Now they have to have immense commitment, their fitness must be scientifically monitored and their preparation for each race has to be perfect.
As a child racing karts Schuey developed the mentality that you get out of racing what you put in. Rarely has any sport seen a harder worker.
At Benetton he learned the F1 ropes, guided by the experienced hands of Brawn and particularly Pat Symonds, who was his race engineer back then.
He also learned how to play the political game, making sure that the team was firmly lined up behind him and that his number two driver stayed just that.
By the time he arrived at Ferrari in 1996 he was the real deal.
The car that year was a dog, but he still won three races with it including an emotional win at Monza, where tens of thousands of tifosi opened a giant Ferrari flag under the podium.
I interviewed him a lot in those days and I recall his eye-popping awe at the scale of the reception and the passion he had felt from the crowd that day.
At Ferrari he built around him a super team of engineers and managers, ruled by a ‘circle of fear’, in which the key players were motivated as much by a desire not to let the others down as by the thirst for victory.
Ferrari had not won a title for going on 20 years, but Schumacher gave them five in succession from 2000-2004.
I recall vividly the win at Budapest in 1998, where Schumacher was asked by Brawn to find something like 19s in 17 laps over Hakkinen as he switched him on to a bold three stop plan and he did it, winning the race.
The McLaren on the Bridgestones was a superior car to the Ferrari on Goodyears that year, but Schuey took some unlikely victories to keep himself in the title chase.
This weekend is his 15th appearance at Monza and amazingly he comes here as a title contender for the 11th time. I do not know how he has withstood the pressure of being the pacesetter in F1 for so long.
If you look at how much it took out of driver like Hill or Hakkinen, how they aged before your eyes and then you look at Michael who has changed remarkably little.
I think that the accident at Silverstone in 1999 did him a favour in that respect.
It gave him an unexpected three months off at a very busy time and he was able to take stock of where he was, recharge his batteries and refocus. He came back at a higher level and that propelled him to the five titles in a row from 2000-4.
I honestly don’t believe he would have kept going for so long if he had not had that break in 1999.
The talent
As a pure driving talent, he is obviously up there among the greats, with Jim Clark, Senna, Stewart, Fangio, Prost and a handful of others. But unlike all of those drivers he has rarely had someone of his own level to race against. And he admits this privately. His battle with Ayrton Senna was in its infancy when the Brazilian was killed in 1994.
Mika Hakkinen challenged and beat him in the late 1990s, but he lacked Schumacher’s strength, motivation and consistency.
Only in the last two seasons, with the rise of Fernando Alonso, has Schumacher come up against a driver truly on his own level. They have raced hard this season, honours have been evenly split between them, but Alonso has begun to get the upper hand and I think Schumacher knows that.
Alonso told me last week that he loves racing against Michael because neither wants to finish second to the other.
Alonso is the driver most like Schumacher in many ways.
I’m not sure that he works as hard, but he has a similar mentality, he also has great intelligence and adaptability, which are two of Schumacher’s great qualities. For this reason their battles at Imola last year and this as well as Istanbul, were so interesting, because Schumacher could probably see a lot of himself in the way the other car was being driven
The sure thing
Schumacher is quitting because he doesn’t want to race in the same team as Kimi Raikkonen. Jean Todt has a soft spot for Finns from his rallying days. He likes their quiet, uncomplicated natures and above all he values their attacking spirit.
The crucial point here is timing.
Ferrari had to take Raikkonen now because he is available. If they had not signed him up (12 months ago the deal was agreed) then Kimi would have gone to Renault and Ferrari would have been left with no proven top line driver for the future.
Massa may turn out to be a world-beater, so might any number of youngsters, but right here, right now if you want to win you need either Kimi or Fernando or a big car advantage.
Ferrari needed certainty, so as not to lose all the momentum they have built over the last five years. Schumacher could offer them another year, maybe two at best, but is he still at the same level, could he fulfil his part in the ‘circle of fear’?
Reluctantly Schumacher was forced to accept this. Ferrari were doing the right thing in hiring Raikkonen and that lead directly to his decision to stop.
The dark side
There is also of course, the darker side to Schumacher’s racing genius.
His willingness to punch below the belt is something that sits oddly with his prowess as a driver.
He got away with it a few times in his early career, the first really high profile occasion being when he deliberately drove Damon Hill off the road in Adelaide to clinch the 1994 drivers’ world title, many wondered why he felt he needed to do such things as clearly he was a vastly superior driver.
But it seemed as though he panicked under pressure and lashed out. So desperate was his desire to win, he could not accept that he had made a mistake that would lead to him coming second.
Schumacher came of age as a driver when the sport was ruled by hard men like Senna and Prost, who had a history of committing professional fouls on each other.
He thought that this was how things were done. He got away with it in 1994, but when he tried it again on Jacques Villeneuve at Jerez in 1997, the world had moved on and he was crucified.
He remains the only driver to be disqualified from a championship for unsportsmanlike behaviour. It is a stain on his record and on his character.
As was Monaco this year, where he was found guilty by the race stewards of deliberately parking his car on the racing line during qualifying, to stop Alonso from beating him to pole position.
I was quite shocked by that.
Knowing that in all probability it was his final season in F1, it seemed an odd moment for him to remind everyone of the bad things he has done in his otherwise exceptional career.
But again it was a case of, having made a mistake, lashing out to stop the other man from beating him. Now the older driver, Schumacher was raging against the dying of the light, desperate to stop Alonso, in many ways a younger version of himself, from beating him.
The legacy
It is hard for you and I and even his fellow drivers to understand the mentality of a great champion like Schumacher. They see the world differently. My insight into it comes principally from something Nigel Mansell told me about Senna.
On the podium in Budapest in 1992, when Mansell had finally won the world championship, Senna came up to him and said, ‘Well done Nigel. Now you understand why I am such a bastard. It is because I never want anyone else to have the feeling that you have now.’
Mansell said it made his blood run cold when he heard that. He was a sportsman, a racer, but not cut from the same cloth as Senna and Schumacher.
This then is the enigma that was Michael Schumacher the racing driver.
An exceptional driver, a great leader and a ferocious competitor, who has given the sport so many great moments, but also some darker ones.
Will history revere his amazing record or judge him harshly for his treachery? I think the former. But one thing is for sure; the sport will be very different next year without him.
C'mon guys contribute to this thread!!
His Poignant Farewell Speech
“It has been a very special day and to finish it in this style as we have been doing today, looking at the championship as well, but much more at what’s going happen somehow in the future.
I mean there has been a lot of discussion for sometime which concerns my future and so on, and I think all the fans and motorsport interested people, they have a right to be explained what’s going to happen.
I’m sorry, it may have taken longer than some of you wanted but you have to find the right moment and we feel this is the right moment.
To make it short, this is going to be my last Monza race. At the end of this year I have decided together with the team that I’m going to retire from racing.
It has been an exceptional, really exceptional time what motorsport in more than 30 years has given to me.
I really loved every single moment of the good and the bad ones. Those moments make life so special.
In particular I should thank my family starting with obviously my Dad, my passed-away Mum and obviously my wife and my kids who at all times supported what I was doing.
And without their support, without their strengths to survive in this business and this sport, and to perform, I think it would have been impossible.
I can’t be thankful enough to my family, but as well to all my mates at the Benetton time and obviously especially at the Ferrari days when I have made so many friends.
I have so many great guys in that team and it has been a really tough decision to decide to not work together at this level with all my friends and engineers and everybody.
They are just so great.
But one day the day has to come, and I felt at a point that this is the moment.
As well, in terms of timing the decision I thought that it was fair to find that moment that Felipe [Massa] has a chance to decide his future, because I think he is a very great guy.
He has been doing a very great job to the team, very supportive, a great team-mate and there was a moment for him to decide his future and there was no point for me to take my decision any later than his decision has been taken.
And this was the conclusion.
As well, of in a way my future replacement, it’s a driver that at some stage the team will tell, but I always was pleased and I know a long time ago, to hear that he was the person.
And now I would just like to concentrate on this last three wins and make it, or finish it in style, and hopefully win the championship.
We have done a big step today for that and I really look forward.
I want to thank everybody who has been on my way, or supporting me at all stages, there has been a lot of people.
Thank you very much."
Tributes from fellow drivers ...
Felipe Massa – Ferrari team-mate
“It's a big pleasure just to have the experience to race with him, and I'm more close to Michael even since 2003 when I was test driver. He's a very nice guy, we get along quite well and he's very professional, he's definitely the most complete driver in Formula 1, in my opinion.
Ross Brawn – Ferrari technical director
"Everybody will miss Michael, whoever they are. When he does retire, it will be a big event for everyone, and I think someone of his ability, someone of his experience, and someone of his involvement will be very badly missed. But F1 goes on, Ferrari goes on..."
Fernando Alonso – Renault
“I think it is always good to race with great champions and with people with a lot of wins, pole positions, fastest laps and all the records Michael had. So it is always good to beat him. It is better than the other ones.”
Giancarlo Fisichella – Renault
“Formula 1 will miss Michael. I don't think we will miss Michael in the football games because even if he retires, I think he will play with us. He loves playing football. He's a great driver, he's a nice guy and he is still fit, he's still quick.
“The only time when we can talk together is in the football match for charity. And he is a very nice guy and especially when I bring my family and my children he is nice guy he talks and he plays with the children so you can see he is a father like me, a normal guy”
Jarno Trulli – Toyota
“It's been a pleasure for me to race with him, and obviously he has achieved a lot. It's not up to me to say how much, but the numbers speak for themselves. We will miss him a little bit as a driver, we will miss him in the football matches, because that has been very nice this year but on the other hand, I think it's his own life and he has to get on with it.
“He's given a lot to Formula 1, he's given a lot to Ferrari and it's normal that a lot of people will miss him.”
Tonio Liuzzi – Toro Rosso
“Yeah, of course it would be a big shame if he retires because he's the greatest champion of the last ten years for sure and to race with him has always been pretty fair and he has given us some good lessons on TV. He's always been a great guy and a great driver to talk about racing and sports with but for sure, that's life.
“Sometime he thought maybe he had to continue a bit more with his family and I agree with his decision if he will retire. It's just a decision which arises once in your life, the time when you have to say it's over.”
Ron Dennis – McLaren boss
“I have had some great moments with him and they are probably off-circuit and I think you spoil it if you share it. And I don't offend you, but I immediately remembered a particular moment that was very good fun, but I don't think he'd particularly want me to share it with you."
Norbert Haug – Mercedes motorsport boss
“I think he has had a remarkable career. Everyone knows that. You only have to look at the statistics and he has contributed a lot to the sport. I remember very well where it all started and he was a German Formula Three driver and he came to junior team and that is just 15 years ago and its not too long since he started and so they are absolutely great memories.
“One thing I can tell you from my memories and I can tell you when I came to Mercedes-Benz and he was already a group C driver and he was getting out of the pits and he was quicker than Jochen Mass in his fastest race lap and I thought ‘that is something' and it was.”
A (balanced?) tribute by James Allen - ITV-F1 commentator ..
The curtain falls
Although everyone has been talking about it all weekend, it is still hard to accept that Michael Schumacher has called time on his F1 career.
Our careers have overlapped; I started in 1990, he made his debut at Spa in 1991.
It feels like a very long time ago that he burst onto the scene at Spa in the green 7Up Jordan, because it is a long time - 250 races.
I’ll never forget standing at the top of Eau Rouge during Friday qualifying (as it was then) with veteran journalist Denis Jenkinson.
We had no diamond vision screens then but Jenks reeled off the top five as he saw it, based on their speed from La Source and through Eau Rouge. He had Schumacher fifth behind Senna, Mansell, Patrese and Berger and he was right of course.
The Jordan looked amazing and it was this 22-year-old called Michael Schumacher at the wheel.
Jenks said that we should keep an eye on this boy. He looked like the real thing.
A week later I was having dinner in London with an F1 crowd which included John Watson. He took a call, I believe from Eddie Jordan, and when he hung up he said, “Schumacher has gone to Benetton!”
After just one race the guy was the hottest property in the sport.
The history
Frank Williams said that he and all the other team owners were kicking themselves in Spa that they hadn’t spotted Schumacher’s potential sooner.
Ross Brawn, then at Benetton, certainly had, racing against him in sportscars, Ross with Jaguar, Michael with Sauber-Mercedes. Mercedes were not in F1 in 1991 and by the time they arrived Schumacher was lost to them.
They had several big efforts at getting him, but failed each time.
So it was Flavio Briatore, from 1991-95 and then Jean Todt who had the principal benefit of running Schumacher in their car and he repaid both of them in spades.
Statistically at least, he is the greatest driver in history.
He has re-written the history books and raised the bar in terms of what is expected of a Grand Prix driver.
Now they have to have immense commitment, their fitness must be scientifically monitored and their preparation for each race has to be perfect.
As a child racing karts Schuey developed the mentality that you get out of racing what you put in. Rarely has any sport seen a harder worker.
At Benetton he learned the F1 ropes, guided by the experienced hands of Brawn and particularly Pat Symonds, who was his race engineer back then.
He also learned how to play the political game, making sure that the team was firmly lined up behind him and that his number two driver stayed just that.
By the time he arrived at Ferrari in 1996 he was the real deal.
The car that year was a dog, but he still won three races with it including an emotional win at Monza, where tens of thousands of tifosi opened a giant Ferrari flag under the podium.
I interviewed him a lot in those days and I recall his eye-popping awe at the scale of the reception and the passion he had felt from the crowd that day.
At Ferrari he built around him a super team of engineers and managers, ruled by a ‘circle of fear’, in which the key players were motivated as much by a desire not to let the others down as by the thirst for victory.
Ferrari had not won a title for going on 20 years, but Schumacher gave them five in succession from 2000-2004.
I recall vividly the win at Budapest in 1998, where Schumacher was asked by Brawn to find something like 19s in 17 laps over Hakkinen as he switched him on to a bold three stop plan and he did it, winning the race.
The McLaren on the Bridgestones was a superior car to the Ferrari on Goodyears that year, but Schuey took some unlikely victories to keep himself in the title chase.
This weekend is his 15th appearance at Monza and amazingly he comes here as a title contender for the 11th time. I do not know how he has withstood the pressure of being the pacesetter in F1 for so long.
If you look at how much it took out of driver like Hill or Hakkinen, how they aged before your eyes and then you look at Michael who has changed remarkably little.
I think that the accident at Silverstone in 1999 did him a favour in that respect.
It gave him an unexpected three months off at a very busy time and he was able to take stock of where he was, recharge his batteries and refocus. He came back at a higher level and that propelled him to the five titles in a row from 2000-4.
I honestly don’t believe he would have kept going for so long if he had not had that break in 1999.
The talent
As a pure driving talent, he is obviously up there among the greats, with Jim Clark, Senna, Stewart, Fangio, Prost and a handful of others. But unlike all of those drivers he has rarely had someone of his own level to race against. And he admits this privately. His battle with Ayrton Senna was in its infancy when the Brazilian was killed in 1994.
Mika Hakkinen challenged and beat him in the late 1990s, but he lacked Schumacher’s strength, motivation and consistency.
Only in the last two seasons, with the rise of Fernando Alonso, has Schumacher come up against a driver truly on his own level. They have raced hard this season, honours have been evenly split between them, but Alonso has begun to get the upper hand and I think Schumacher knows that.
Alonso told me last week that he loves racing against Michael because neither wants to finish second to the other.
Alonso is the driver most like Schumacher in many ways.
I’m not sure that he works as hard, but he has a similar mentality, he also has great intelligence and adaptability, which are two of Schumacher’s great qualities. For this reason their battles at Imola last year and this as well as Istanbul, were so interesting, because Schumacher could probably see a lot of himself in the way the other car was being driven
The sure thing
Schumacher is quitting because he doesn’t want to race in the same team as Kimi Raikkonen. Jean Todt has a soft spot for Finns from his rallying days. He likes their quiet, uncomplicated natures and above all he values their attacking spirit.
The crucial point here is timing.
Ferrari had to take Raikkonen now because he is available. If they had not signed him up (12 months ago the deal was agreed) then Kimi would have gone to Renault and Ferrari would have been left with no proven top line driver for the future.
Massa may turn out to be a world-beater, so might any number of youngsters, but right here, right now if you want to win you need either Kimi or Fernando or a big car advantage.
Ferrari needed certainty, so as not to lose all the momentum they have built over the last five years. Schumacher could offer them another year, maybe two at best, but is he still at the same level, could he fulfil his part in the ‘circle of fear’?
Reluctantly Schumacher was forced to accept this. Ferrari were doing the right thing in hiring Raikkonen and that lead directly to his decision to stop.
The dark side
There is also of course, the darker side to Schumacher’s racing genius.
His willingness to punch below the belt is something that sits oddly with his prowess as a driver.
He got away with it a few times in his early career, the first really high profile occasion being when he deliberately drove Damon Hill off the road in Adelaide to clinch the 1994 drivers’ world title, many wondered why he felt he needed to do such things as clearly he was a vastly superior driver.
But it seemed as though he panicked under pressure and lashed out. So desperate was his desire to win, he could not accept that he had made a mistake that would lead to him coming second.
Schumacher came of age as a driver when the sport was ruled by hard men like Senna and Prost, who had a history of committing professional fouls on each other.
He thought that this was how things were done. He got away with it in 1994, but when he tried it again on Jacques Villeneuve at Jerez in 1997, the world had moved on and he was crucified.
He remains the only driver to be disqualified from a championship for unsportsmanlike behaviour. It is a stain on his record and on his character.
As was Monaco this year, where he was found guilty by the race stewards of deliberately parking his car on the racing line during qualifying, to stop Alonso from beating him to pole position.
I was quite shocked by that.
Knowing that in all probability it was his final season in F1, it seemed an odd moment for him to remind everyone of the bad things he has done in his otherwise exceptional career.
But again it was a case of, having made a mistake, lashing out to stop the other man from beating him. Now the older driver, Schumacher was raging against the dying of the light, desperate to stop Alonso, in many ways a younger version of himself, from beating him.
The legacy
It is hard for you and I and even his fellow drivers to understand the mentality of a great champion like Schumacher. They see the world differently. My insight into it comes principally from something Nigel Mansell told me about Senna.
On the podium in Budapest in 1992, when Mansell had finally won the world championship, Senna came up to him and said, ‘Well done Nigel. Now you understand why I am such a bastard. It is because I never want anyone else to have the feeling that you have now.’
Mansell said it made his blood run cold when he heard that. He was a sportsman, a racer, but not cut from the same cloth as Senna and Schumacher.
This then is the enigma that was Michael Schumacher the racing driver.
An exceptional driver, a great leader and a ferocious competitor, who has given the sport so many great moments, but also some darker ones.
Will history revere his amazing record or judge him harshly for his treachery? I think the former. But one thing is for sure; the sport will be very different next year without him.
C'mon guys contribute to this thread!!