F1-Blog

Michael says goodbye to racing

Michael Schumacher will be remembered in Formula 1 for many reasons.

He is not only an incredibly talented driver, but also a driver that has caused a lot of controversy.

Michael Schumacher was born January the 3rd 1969, to Rolf and Elizabeth Schumacher. His younger brother, Ralph, is also an F1 driver.

Michael holds almost all the records in the sport at the moment and, it would seem, many of them will not be broken at any time soon.

Michael famously started his racing career in carting when he was four.
The cart was built by his father, and he raced this at his home cart track at Kerpen.

At the age of 12, Michael obtained his licence and started to race competitively winning various European cart championships. He moved onto the Formula Ford championship in 1988, where he also competed in the Formula 3 series. It was here that he won the German championship in 1990.

Massa still hopeful

Massa is still hopeful of a drive in the race seat of Scuddera Ferrari. This however looks like it will hinge on the decision of Michael Schumacher, as it's almost set that Kimi will join the team.

If Michael decides to stay in his current seat alongside Kimi, then it seems that Massa's only chance of a seat in the Scarlet car is if he reprises his role as tester.

That may actually turn out to be a good decision, as he will almost certainly get upgraded to the driver role when Michael decides to call it a day.

Massa's contract is due for renewal at the end of the year, and there seems to be very little options available to him if he want's a competitive race seat.

However do the team internally think that Michael will make way for the new boys? Kimi and Massa racing at Ferrari would make a good combination, and the fact that Massa has certainly got better over the season would show it to be a good decision at the Italian team.

German Grand Prix

The German grand prix proved interesting on a number of fronts. The Bridgestone/Ferrari combination showed again that the Japanese tyre giant has taken a substantial step up in performance of late, even the new 'experimental' Michelin tyre had not got the pace needed.

The Renault's showed that they do require the 'outlawed' mass damper system they have employed for the past 18 months, as the car was not it's settled easy to drive self (with Fisi calling the car un-drivable in his second stint), it also seems to have caused blistering to the tyres on the car in the race.

McLaren also showed they have found some performance from somewhere, yes it's not as much as they need, but it's a clear step up, and last but not least Honda have found the level of pace that they showed in the early stages of the season.

Did all of these factors then make for a good race? Well no, the Ferrari's ran off and hid after the mistakenly short fuelled Kimi Raikkonen had to pit on lap 10.

So if we ignore the scarlet cars what do we make of the rest of the bunch?

Well, although Kimi was short fuelled, and then had a stuck wheel during the first pit stop (for the second week running) he fought through and came 3rd, a great drive by the Fin, and shows why so many teams are fighting for his signature at the end of the year. Pedro de la Rossa showed decent pace as well, however his engine packed up on him early on in the race.

The pitting of the leading McLaren allowed the Ferrari's to take the first two spot's and have an unhindered race to the flag. However the other teams running on Japanese rubber showed it was the tyre of choice, with both the Toyota and Williams cars setting good pace.

Barrichello suffered an engine failure on lap 18, this caused him to retire from the race, leaving only button to make point's for the Japanese Honda team.

Button was now running in third behind the quickly disappearing Ferrari's. He pitted on lap 15, showing just how much pace the Ferrari's had in the bag. Alonso was loosing ground in fifth to team mate Fisichella when both he and Massa pitted on lap 19.

Lap 30 brought a big crash from Jacques Villeneuve, who looked to have something in his suspension break as he was mid corner, the car seemed to loose it's front end and come to a halt in the barriers leading onto the home straight. Both him and team mate Nick Heidfeld had separate coming together’s on lap one with other cars, this could have been the root cause of the failure. Nick Heidfeld had already retired after the lap one incident, meaning both of the German BMW cars were out of their home GP.

Fisichella started to struggle with his Renault, allowing Alonso to catch up and overtake him in the stops, Button, Raikkonen and Mark Webber where in a battle for the last podium step.

The weekend of the Toyota driver Ralph Schumacher got worse, he was penalised with a drive through penalty for speeding in the pits. However Trulli after starting from the back of the grid (penalised for an engine change) had made his way into the points scoring positions. 

The 3 way race for the third step came to an abrupt end, when Webber's Cosworth engine let go allowing the race to be between Jenson and Kimi.

The race had one final climax, with Trulli coming on fast behind the obviously suffering Renault of Fisichella. The Renault however had just enough pace to fend off the Toyota assault until the end of the race.

The final kick came when after the race, the stewards deemed the rear wings of the Midland Toyota cars to be flexing, and disqualified them from the race. As they only finished 13th and 14th there were no point's involved, however it seems that even the smaller teams are now trying out the 'flexi' technologies the larger teams have obviously been running.

JV leads the assult

Jacques Villeneuve has had his clashes with Michael Schumacher before (Jerez in 997 comes to mind). But he has taken the attack to Schumi over his 'mistake' at Rascasse corner that ultimately ended up in him stalling his car on the outside of the corner.

JV told reporters “I hope it was deliberate, because if that was a mistake he should not even have an F1 super licence, If you can make a mistake like that, you shouldn't drive a race car.

There’s no way you could make a mistake like that. It’s the kind of thing I couldn't dream of doing myself. I don't know what goes through your mind when you decide to do that, when you know that the rest of the world can see.

I don't understand it, it's stupid. He didn't need to do that, he's a seven-times world champion, he was on pole position. Why do that? It’s only going to make him look bad.

This is embarrassing. Embarrassing for a world champion. It would even be embarrassing for Ide.”

Michael causes controversy

Controversy in the last moments of Qualifying for the Monaco GP.

Michael Schumacher 'parked' his car on the second to last corner causing yellow flags to be displayed, this in effect ended everyone who was on a lap at that point's chances of getting a good time.

The Renault team have gone to the stewards and it is believed they are going to ask for Schumacher's pole lap time to be scratched. It is also known that tams up and down the pit lane are under the same belief about Schumacher, believing he stalled the car where he did on purpose.