originally posted by TheFazz on my-kart.org:
The F1 career of the most successful formula one driver of all time is about to come to a close this sunday. Much as i hate the guy’s guts, i must say that Michael Schumacher has been the closest you will ever get to a perfect formula one driver. Fast, fit, aggressive, technical, analytical, smart, strong teamplayer, good pr – everything a modern day f1 driver should be. And this shows in the monumental statistics accumulated by the man. He has just about broken every f1 numbers record apart from the most race starts (IIRC, just 6 shy of Ricardo Patrese’s 256 starts).
The numbers (wins, wdcs, poles) starts to become meaningless now, but what is important is that Schumi dominated his era more than anybody has ever done before. He has worked to build a strong team that supports him since day one. It is also noteworthy that Schumi’s team of Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne and other technical people have been with him almost throughout his f1 career. This kind of stability is also unprecedented in many sports.
Schumi’s debut race at Spa in 1991 – more than 15 years ago – marked the coming of a legend. Shame that f1 was deprived of the spectacle of battles between Senna and Schumi in the mid 90s. That would have been legendary as well.
Still after 15 years at the top, Schumi is still there at the top. But this time round, it is Fernando Alonso who is his challenger. Alonso has proven to be a worthy successor. A worthy holder of the F1 crown. Like Schumi, Alonso’s ability to pull something out of the bag when on paper he shouldn’t – gives him a certain aura of success that Schumi had long held before.
F1 today has grown tremendously partly due to Schumi’s exploits – he polarises opinions of f1 followers who either want to see how many more records he will break, or who will finally humble the great man.
For me, all i can say is Danke Michael for the privilege of witnessing something very special in f1.
As a parting surprise, Shell released a couple of videos of Schumacher….
Schumi conducts a quick pitstop:
Schumi in a petrol station queue:
Schumi – is he real?